Further Beyond
by NotesfromaClassroom
Summary: The missing scenes from the movie "Star Trek Beyond." Now complete. Enjoy as you watch the movie again!
1. A Rock and a Hard Place

**Chapter One: A Rock and a Hard Place**

 **Disclaimer: No money made here. Free fun!**

Jim Kirk leans forward, his hand hovering over the Send button of his personal computer console in his quarters. The application for promotion to vice admiral, written weeks ago but still unsent, is on the screen.

He's read it so many times he has it memorized. This is what officers do, right? Mark off the days in one job with an eye on something better. Onward and upward, the youngest captain in the fleet, soon to be the youngest vice admiral, his promotion almost certain if he wants it. One for the books, if things like that mattered to him.

They don't. If they did, he would have applied for promotion a year ago when he was first eligible.

Instead, here he is 960 days into what should be a plum assignment on the edge of Federation space, doing battle with an uneasiness that feels like a rock in his shoe. If the journey is at times routine—if falling asleep reading upcoming mission briefs about Teenaxian protocols and Fabonian artifacts isn't enough to stave off the old restlessness—well, then maybe he isn't the man for this job after all.

So far he's shared those musings with no one but his log.

And Carol, of course. Before she left the _Enterprise_ two months ago, he confided his misgivings to her.

"Routine is good," Carol said without hesitation. "Predictable isn't the same thing as boring. Chaos is vastly overrated."

They were in his quarters, in his bed, and Jim was in no mood to be serious. "Chaos is fun," he countered.

"You don't believe that," she said. "The only people who do are adrenaline junkies."

"Guilty as charged." He ran the palm of his hand over her shoulder. Carol ignored the invitation and pulled away slightly, turning her gaze on him.

"You appreciate order more than you think you do. You want your departments humming along without incident."

With a sigh, Jim crooked his elbow and pillowed his head. They've had this conversation before. Many times. "Carol—"

"I've decided to accept the transfer."

He sat up then, more dismayed than surprised. "I thought we agreed—"

Again she cut him off. "The dean called today. She said the Academy gig was just for one semester, that if I took it I could have my choice of postings. Both Riverside and the new shipyards at Yorktown will need weapons experts when the Poseidon-class phasers come online."

Carol is, first and foremost, a designer, a visionary engineer of tactical matter/anti-matter weaponry. Doing maintenance work on a starship is a wheel spin, a time out while she runs in place. Jim gets that, understands her own restless need to move on.

"Don't you see?" she added. "As head of installation at one of the shipyards, I'll have first crack at customizing the armaments for each ship."

"Your dream job," Jim said, not meeting her gaze.

He heard her take in a breath and let it out slowly. "You could come with me."

He laughed then, thinking she was joking, and he looked up. Not laughter but serious purpose in her expression, and something else—an unspoken appeal.

"You really mean that? Give up the _Enterprise_? And do what?"

"Apply for a promotion. Do what vice admirals do. Sit at a fancy desk and push papers. Stay out of trouble." She gave a tentative smile. "Come home at night for dinner with your wife and children."

For a moment Jim was too stunned to speak.

They've talked around the subject but neither has dared to say the words out loud before. Always the future was like some distant planet that he intended to visit some day, a speck on the horizon small enough that it barely registered.

Yet here it is, suddenly looming overhead. Is he ready, at 29, to make that sort of commitment?

At his age, his father was already raising one son with another on the way.

Of course, George Kirk had more options than Jim does. After the destruction of the _Kelvin_ , Starfleet stopped outfitting large multi-generational ships, the kind George and Winona Kirk had called home. Now service personnel who want to raise children are forced to leave them behind when they ship out, the way Sulu does.

Maintaining a long term relationship shipboard is difficult enough. Not everyone is like Spock and Uhura, gracefully navigating the tensions unique to co-workers who are also lovers.

"I don't know what to say," Jim stuttered at last.

Carol leaned forward, kissed him softly, and stood up.

"Your silence says all I need to know," she said.

A few days later she was gone.

For the first month after they parted he felt her absence everywhere—in the empty chair at the captain's table, in the chill of the sheets on his bed. More than once he saw her at the end of a crowded corridor only to have the image resolve into someone else as he drew closer.

The second month was even harder. Carol Marcus was the only woman he'd ever told his secrets to—his lingering resentment toward his abusive step-father, his teenage years spent in juvenile detention in Sioux City, his fantasy that his father would show up one day, alive and apologetic for his long absence. He's told her that he wakes up afraid every morning that he can't live up to Christopher Pike's belief in him. Confessed his conviction that without his junior officers he would be at a total loss.

She's the only woman he's ever said _I love you_ to, or at least said it and meant it.

If he's honest, she's the only woman he's ever let walk away and regretted it, the only woman he assumed, somehow, was going to remain in his life.

Then two weeks ago he filled out the application for promotion. More than once he opened his mouth to say something about it to Spock or Bones but then fell silent, certain they would not understand or approve, though he can't articulate why, not even to himself. It feels too much like a betrayal of sorts, an admission that their faith in him was misplaced after all.

The door chime sounds and Jim tabs the application closed.

"Enter," he says over his shoulder.

"Thought you were meeting me for a drink," Bones says. A glass appears on the desk and Jim picks it up and swivels his chair around.

"Cheers." Bones lifts his own glass up in salute and settles on the chaise lounge in the corner of the room. "For God's sake, Jim," he says, taking a sip of what Jim decides is better than decent bourbon, "when are you going to stop moping around? No woman's worth all this."

Jim eyes Bones over the rim of the shot glass. "That's how you did it after your divorce? Just told yourself to stop being lonely?"

"I didn't say you wouldn't be lonely. But you can stop being sad about it. It just didn't work out. Time to move on."

"What if I'm tired of moving on? What's wrong with settling down somewhere?"

Bones lets out a snort. "And do what? Push papers in some boring desk job? Play it safe and grow old and rusty? Hardly sounds like the Jim Kirk I know."

"Maybe you don't know me that well."

"I know you better than you think I do. Okay, so right now you're feeling sad and lonely—wait, hear me out—and you think you always will be. But you're surviving. And if you wait a little longer, you'll see that you're not just surviving, you're okay. Better than okay. Captain of the best damn ship in the fleet."

Jim takes another sip of bourbon. "But what if that's not enough? Don't you ever want something _more_?"

Bones frowns into his glass and shakes his head. "I'm a doctor, Jim, not a philosopher."

"Next time I need some pearls of wisdom, I'm going to Spock instead."

"Good luck with that," Bones says. "I don't think he'll be handing out relationship advice much longer."

"What do you mean?"

"Don't mind me. Just a feeling."

The intercom whistles and Jim reaches up to toggle it open.

"Captain," Lt. Uhura says, "there's a transmission from San Francisco for you."

"Starfleet?"

"Negative, sir. A private message on subspace. Do you want me to send it to your quarters?"

He darts a meaningful glance in Bones' direction. Draining his glass in a single motion, Bones stands up and nods. "I'm outta here," he says as he moves to the door.

The message is a prerecorded packet from Carol. The time stamp shows that she made the tape twelve hours ago—which at this distance means she must have sent it soon afterwards.

"Hello, Jim," she says into the camera, and Jim feels the familiar lurch in his stomach. "The Academy is fine and some of my students are brilliant, so no complaints here. I just wanted you to know that I've put in for a transfer to _Yorktown_ when my time here is up. At least that way when you make your regular resupply runs, we can say hello in person. If you want to. I understand if you don't."

Her tone is not whinging or manipulative but as straightforward as she always is. He blinks twice, surprised to feel his lashes wet. Leaning forward to click off the recording, he sees Carol tilt her head slightly and hears her add, "I miss you." Then the screen goes black.

Looking down, he sees the empty glass on the desk.

Bones was wrong. He isn't okay. He's sad and lonely and afraid of growing old alone.

He tabs open the application for vice admiral. Lifting his hand, he hesitates only a moment before pushing Send.

 **Author's Note: So, my Muse has been on vacation for far too long, but she stopped by recently and whispered the ghost of an idea in my ear.**

" **What about a missing scenes story to go with** _ **Star Trek Beyond**_ **?" she said.**

 **So here's the first chapter. I hope you enjoy it—and if you do, thanks for letting me know!**


	2. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

**Chapter Two: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter**

 **Disclaimer: No shekels crossing palms. Enjoy!**

Although she's been on delta shift for several weeks, Nyota Uhura wakes too early most days. Today is no different. Fifteen minutes of restless tossing on her narrow bunk and she gives up, telling the computer to turn on the lights in her quarters.

Part of the problem is just that, that she's back here instead of in Spock's more comfortable quarters on C deck. Her choice, she reminds herself, just as taking delta shift was her request—Spock lifting one eyebrow and broadcasting an unmistakable pained expression when she told him.

"Just for awhile," she said, but even as she did, she wasn't sure that was true.

Lately he's been more preoccupied than normal, spending his free time reading newsfeeds from New Vulcan, composing long letters to government officials there, sitting for hours cross-legged in front of his _asenoi_ —his meditation pot flickering like a misshapen jack-o-lantern. She knows he's worried about the alarming spike in the mortality rate of the survivors of the Vulcan genocide, particularly among those whose bondmates were lost. Even relatively young people are succumbing to _khaf-spol lak-tra,_ or heart grief, despite efforts from the remaining healers to help them cope.

She's stopped suggesting to Spock that he, too, should seek a healer. His dismissal of her concern is upsetting enough, but now he seems _driven_ in a way that frightens her. Whatever comfort she has been able to offer him in the past—whatever balance she brought to their relationship—has slipped away so gradually that she isn't sure what she could or should have done differently.

She doesn't have to be at her duty station for two hours so she makes her way to the mess hall. Almost no one is there, but as she picks up a carton of yogurt and pours herself a cup of coffee, Nyota spots Pavel Chekov hunched over a mug at one end of a table.

"Mind if I sit here?" She waits long enough for Chekov to look up and nod before she slides into the opposite chair. "Have you already eaten?"

The young navigator is paler than usual, his eyes red-rimmed.

"Thank you, no," he says without looking up. "I'm not hungry."

So the ship scuttlebutt must be true. Chekov looks for all the world like a broken-hearted puppy.

Nyota dips her spoon in her yogurt. "Want to talk about it?"

Chekov looks up. "About _it_?"

"About anything you want to talk about," Nyota says. "Work, home, your love life. Stuff like that."

"I don't think you can help me, Lieutenant."

"Probably not, but that doesn't mean I won't try."

For a moment she thinks Chekov will stand up and bolt. She watches as his expression flickers—a cascade of self-pity and sorrow and anger crossing his face like a storm. With a sudden motion, he drains his coffee cup and sets it with a bang on the table.

"Okay," he says, sitting up and crossing his arms. "Yes, maybe you can help me understand. You're a woman, Lieutenant."

The corner of Nyota's mouth turns up and she struggles not to break out in a full-force grin. "Last time I checked that was true," she says. Chekov narrows his eyes at her and she hastens to add, "I mean, yes. You want a woman's perspective on something."

"Not something. _Someone._ Ensign El-Fajorrah," he says.

Nyota hooks her fingers through the handle of her coffee mug and waits for Chekov to continue. When he doesn't, she prompts, "Did you want to ask me something about her? I don't know her that well."

And suddenly the stopper is out, Chekov throwing up his arms and raising his voice.

"I thought _I_ knew her, but I was mistaken. Yes, Pavel, I love you! No, Pavel, I don't love you! Not the way humans want to be loved. What does that even mean— _like humans want to be loved_!"

So that's it. Ensign El-Fajorrah is one of the Orion crew members, a pretty red-head who graduated at the top of her class in stellar cartography. Nyota's seen Chekov squiring the ensign in the lounge, noticed that they often eat together at mess.

He's in love—and Ensign El-Fajorrah isn't.

Or she's being a typical Orion, finding delight in her sexuality and dismay at the idea of being tied to one partner.

 _Like humans want to be loved._

Gaila said something similar to her once when Nyota complained that Spock was too Vulcan, the cultural divide between them too great to cross.

"Stop expecting him to act like a human, Gaila cautioned. "He might not be able to love you the way humans want to be loved."

Nyota shivers in the warm mess hall. Most days she is able to think of Gaila without pain, remembering the clutter in their dorm room, the steady annoyance of being awakened at all hours by eager young cadets trying to talk their way into Gaila's bed. If she focuses on the numerous bottles of bright nail polish left opened on the bathroom sink, the ridiculous piles of shoes in the corner, the smell of Gaila's lilac shampoo puddled in the bottom of the shower, then she can conjure up her face without weeping.

The way she does when she remembers anything else about her roommate—her joy when Nyota would agree to go dancing with her, her fierceness when she played left guard in parrises squares, her affection for her friends that led her to do risky things—like rewrite the computer code for Jim Kirk's third attempt at the _Kobayashi Maru_ test.

Nyota can hardly bear to remember the last time she saw her—Gaila's face alight with pleasure when the duty officer called out both their names on the _Farragut's_ roster, Nyota storming off to find Spock in the hangar deck without telling Gaila what she was doing.

And worst of all, her unshakeable conviction that Gaila would be here now if Nyota had spoken up on her behalf, had argued with Spock that both of them deserved to be aboard the _Enterprise_. That she hadn't done that—in the heat of the moment, in the anger that drove her to seek him out—haunts her still. Wakes her up at night. Leaves her drained in the morning, as if she has been running in her dreams. Keeps her feeling guilty.

The way Spock must feel.

"I know it hurts right now," she says to Chekov, "but it will get better."

"You don't understand," Chekov says. "I was sure we could work this out. I know Orions have different ideas, different traditions. I accepted that! She was the one who wouldn't bend. I messed up one time—one time—and told her I wanted us to be together. How is that bad? Why is that wrong? She didn't even try."

Nyota leans forward and places her hand on his arm. "She is who she is, Pavel. She shouldn't have to change for you."

"I'm through with love. It's too hard."

Again Nyota struggles not to smile. "You're young. You'll fall in love again."

Chekov slumps against the back of his chair. "Lieutenant, how did you know? How did you—" He lowers his voice and leans forward. "—and the Commander know you should be together?"

From anyone else this would be crossing the line of propriety—not that she and Spock keep their relationship secret, but from long habit they are circumspect about public displays of affection. Chekov, however, has known them both longer than almost any other person in the crew. When he failed his entrance exam for the Academy, Spock sought him out and arranged for him to be tutored in Standard—the language being his biggest stumbling block—before arranging for him to resit the exam. Nyota took on the heavy lifting of Chekov's language lessons, and more than once she and Spock attended his chess matches and made sure he was looked after when he settled, at last, at the Academy.

She avoids making eye contact now with the earnest young navigator. She has no intention of sharing her and Spock's history—her respect for him as a gifted teacher blossoming into something more when she was his teaching assistant in the language lab. For so long they'd pretended the mutual attraction they felt was something imagined—or ignored—until one night, caught in a rain shower, finding refuge in Spock's faculty apartment, they stopped pretending.

She lets out a long breath and looks up. Chekov is watching her with an intensity that proves how young he is, how earnest.

"I don't know," she says at last. "It's not that you go on a journey and find love at the end. It's more like—like you are on a journey with someone and you have to keep deciding if this is love after all."

She can see that she's confusing him, that her answer is, as far as he's concerned, unsatisfactory. But right now it's all she has to offer.

Gentleman that he is, he lies. "Thank you, Lieutenant. That's…helpful."

As he exits the mess hall, he passes Leonard McCoy coming in.

"I was looking for you," he says as he makes his way to the table. "I've got something for Spock. Is he coming?"

"I, uh, don't think so. We are working different shifts." Without looking at him directly, she feels McCoy's eyes on her. He pulls out the chair Chekov vacated and sits down.

"Uh huh," he says. "When did that start?"

She can play innocent and parry, but McCoy is a friend—her poker buddy at many late-night basement gatherings at the Academy, the only person who has never—as far as she knows—ever told her an easy lie.

"A few weeks ago," she says. "Everybody needs a little distance now and then."

"Uh huh," McCoy says again. "I can see why _you_ might."

It's an affectionate dig at Spock, the kind McCoy hands out to all his friends and to Spock in particular. Nyota gives a tired smile.

"He's probably in his quarters," she says. "Or I can find him. I don't mind."

"Well," McCoy says, handing her an old-fashioned computer thumb drive, "he asked me for everything from the medical conference on Rigelus III. I have a pal who sent me all the conference vids. The journal write-ups are there, too." He hesitates a moment and adds, "His dad okay? I mean, all this stuff is about the aftermath of…you know. Lots of older Vulcans dying too soon."

"Sarek's fine." She says it with more assurance than she feels. Would Spock tell her if he weren't? Have they grown so distant that he would keep something like that from her?

"Spock scared me a few days ago when he showed up in sick bay with a headache," McCoy says. "That's never happened before."

Nyota's so astonished that she can't speak. Not that Spock went to sick bay—she's seen him unwell before—but that she didn't know about his visit. Didn't sense anything from him—no ripple in a corner of her attention, no flicker of worry alerting her that even when they are physically apart, they _are_ together. When the _Enterprise_ was falling out of the sky as Khan aimed the _Vengeance_ towards San Francisco, she had seen mental flashes of what Spock physically saw—the bridge viewscreen, the corridors as he ran to engineering—and she felt the fear and grief that threatened to consume him as the captain lay dying.

And now—nothing. She closes her eyes and casts about for some sense of him.

"You okay?"

She opens her eyes and nods. "I'm fine. Really."

"Liar," McCoy says. The word is full of tenderness and affection. It is the kindest thing she's heard from anyone in a very long time.

 **Author's notes: Thanks to everyone who jumped aboard this new story! Chekov's past relationship with Spock and Nyota is in "Crossing the Equator," my Christopher Pike/Natalie Jolsen story that also features Spock and Uhura. Uhura's sensations as the** _ **Enterprise**_ **fell toward Earth is in my missing scenes story "Deeper Into Darkness." If you are interested in my Spock/Uhura origin stories (including the "caught in the rainstorm scene"), they are listed in my profile.  
**

 **Pinkie promise...the next chapter is funny!**

 **Thanks for reading! Double and triple thanks for leaving a review!**


	3. A Day in Sickbay

**Chapter Three: A Day in Sickbay**

 **Disclaimer: Not my job here, just my fun.**

"Hell must have frozen over," Leonard McCoy says as he presses the hypospray to Spock's neck. "Two visits to sickbay in the same week. Either something's up with these headaches or you miss seeing me."

Spock flinches. "Neither, Doctor. The headaches are insignificant."

"Spock, before this week, I can't remember the last time you darkened my door. These headaches mean something, whether you want to admit it or not."

Spock starts to stand up from the bio-bed but McCoy holds up one hand.

"Unless you can show me your medical license, sit back down. I want to do a blood panel—just to make sure nothing else is going on."

"I assure you—"

"And let me assure you that as chief medical officer, I can declare anyone on this ship unfit for duty. Even you."

Spock doesn't sigh—no Vulcan would—but something in his posture signals his resignation. Nurse Davie, a perky young woman from Sierra Leone, approaches with the medical scanner, waves it in Spock's direction, and tabs something into the screen.

"No virus or bacterial infections," McCoy says, looking over the results. "No tumors or contusions. However, your cortisol levels are high. Stress related, most likely. Now, want to tell me what's going on that's causing you so much stress?"

In the years that McCoy has known and worked with Spock, he's been disabused of the stereotype of an emotionless Vulcan. Fury, shame, annoyance, affection—the doctor has glimpsed them all in the cant of his head, the glint in his eye. Now he watches as Spock gives him a withering glance.

As Spock stands up to leave, his communicator beeps. "Report, Mr. Scott."

"Commander, you asked me to tell you when the captain returned. He just beamed up."

Scotty's voice is loud enough that McCoy overhears it. "Already?" he says with genuine surprise. "How long's he been gone? Fifteen minutes?"

"Eight minutes, seven seconds," Spock says, heading to the door. "Given that the protocols for communicating with the Teenaxian delegation require multiple speeches and the formal presentation of the Abronath, his early return suggests an unfavorable outcome."

Without asking, McCoy follows Spock from sickbay down the corridor to the transporter room. As soon as they round the corner, he sees Jim Kirk, his shirt torn in multiple places, his hair mussed, one of his boots in his hand. A scratch on his cheek, too, though nothing that needs attending to.

Spock speaks first. "Were you successful in negotiating the treaty with the Teenaxians?" McCoy rolls his eyes. Leave it to Spock to miss the obvious.

"Let's just say I came up short," the captain says. Turning to Spock, he tosses the Fabonian artifact he'd taken to the Teenaxians as a peace offering. So the whole thing was a bust. No surprise, really. The Teenaxians are notoriously literal-minded and short-tempered. Over a card game in the rec room several days ago, Uhura mentioned the difficulty of uploading their language into the universal translator.

"I'm not sure they even use metaphors," she complained. "And they have over a thousand words for war. What does that tell you?"

"It tells me I'm glad I don't have your job," McCoy quipped. "Or Jim's. Good luck getting them to talk without fighting."

Now his dire prediction seems to have come true. "Jim, you look like hell." A waste of breath to tell Jim Kirk that he needs to be checked over in sickbay. Except for that minor scratch, the only thing that appears wounded is his pride. At the next intersection, McCoy says goodbye and heads back to his office.

Spock's intractable headaches are more of a concern right now. Certainly the Vulcan survivors are part of what's worrying him—his asking for the Rigelus III conference results shows that they're on his mind.

But there that's other thing, too, with Uhura. What had she said? That everyone needs some distance? That she and Spock are working different shifts as a way of getting some space?

He can't do anything about relationships. If he could, he would have saved his own marriage.

But he can do something about the other source of Spock's headaches—or, at least he can make sure Spock has the most recent research about the rise in the mortality rates of Vulcan survivors. Two of the best xeno-immunologists he knows are currently working at the research facility at _Yorktown_. When the _Enterprise_ docks tomorrow, he'll visit them and see what they know—maybe even put a bug in their ear about the growing alarm in the medical community and the need for expanded collaborative work with New Vulcan.

Nurse Davie greets him at the door of sickbay and points to a bio-bed where Pavel Chekov is sprawled, his clothes covered in vomit, his face clammy.

"Some of his friends brought him here. Said he was partying too hard in the rec room."

McCoy pulls out his handheld scanner but it is acting glitchy again. Lately the scanners connected to the _Enterprise_ database have developed what Scotty calls a hiccup.

"Can't track it to the source," Scotty explained at the last staff meeting. Apparently the occasional flickers are a problem shipwide. "We'll purge the secondary memory coil when we get to _Yorktown_. That ought to reset the system."

McCoy taps the scanner and it hums to life, confirming what he already suspects. Alcohol poisoning, a rarity now that synthehol is usually manufactured with metabolic inhibitors.

"What a mess," McCoy says. Chekov opens one eye, then the other.

"Dr. McCoy?"

"At least you didn't blind yourself," McCoy says. "Want to tell me what this is all about?"

"I've sworn off women."

McCoy harrumphs. "Every broken-hearted fool says the same thing. What you ought to swear off is synthehol. It obviously doesn't agree with you."

"Not synthehol," Chekov says. He gags for a moment and then adds, "Bourbon. The best kind, made in Russia. I brought two bottles from home with me."

"Russian bourbon? You're out of your mind. Don't try to sit up. If this were an ordinary case of synthehol overdose, I could give you the antidote and you'd be up in a few minutes. But this? You're just going to have to sleep this off. And be ready for a miserable time when you wake up."

He signals to Nurse Davie and she helps Chekov replace his soiled clothes for pajama-like pants and a clean t-shirt. A slow infusion drip to help with dehydration—a mild analgesic—and keeping an eye on him here. That's about all anyone can do.

No sooner has he dimmed the lights around Chekov's station that he hears a noise behind him and turns to see two red-shirted security officers with two diminutive horned creatures wriggling in their arms. Behind them are Scotty and Keenser.

"Oh, great," McCoy says. "More company. Just what I need."

The taller security guard, a burly red-head named Lt. Johnson, steps forward. "The captain said he wanted you to look our…guests…over before we send them home. They were caught in the transporter beam up and…uh…might have sustained some injuries in all the excitement…later."

"Why are _you_ here?" McCoy says to Scotty. Keenser looks up and blinks.

"Aye, well, these wee beasties showed up in engineering on an unannounced tour of the ship. Seems they weren't getting along with security so well, but they took a shine to my mate here. He's the one who talked them into coming on down to sickbay like the captain requested."

"They like me," Keenser says, and McCoy watches as the two Teenaxians respond to his voice.

"What are you waiting for," McCoy says to Nurse Davie. He waves toward an empty bio-bed. "Put them there and let's see what we have."

The Teenaxians make throaty squeals but quiet down as soon as Keenser climbs up and sits on the bed with them.

"See?" he says. Scotty stands to the side checking a piece of handheld equipment that McCoy assumes has something to do with imprinting their molecular signature for a safe beam down.

Although the _Enterprise_ does have some preliminary biological data on the Teenaxians, McCoy sees no evidence of injury on either creature.

The same can't be said for the two security officers. Both have several deep lacerations. Nurse Davie applies dermaplasts while McCoy loads the hypospray with a wide-spectrum antibiotic.

"Ouch!" Lt. Johnson yelps as McCoy presses the hypospray to his neck.

"Don't be such a baby," McCoy scolds. The officers move to pick up the Teenaxians but Keenser tells them that they prefer to walk. To make sure they get to the transporter room safely, he and Scotty lead the way, the Teenaxians and red shirts following.

"Before you go," McCoy calls out to Lt. Johnson, "I have one more thing you need to do. Go by Ensign Pavel Chekov's quarters and look for his stash of alcohol." He motions toward Chekov, snoring loudly on the next bed over. "As his doctor, It's my duty to protect him from any more self-inflicted harm."

If Lt. Johnson finds that order unusual, he doesn't let on.

Finally the sickbay is cleared and McCoy has a few minutes to send a note to the two xeno-immunologists on the _Yorktown_. Then he files his reports, orders more analgesics if Chekov wakes up complaining—because with this type of alcohol poisoning, he _will_ —and is almost finished with his daily log when he hears something like a balloon exploding behind him.

Keenser, his snout dripping green goo. Scotty barrels into sickbay behind him, almost in a panic.

"You got to help him, Doctor!" Scotty says.

Keenser gives another loud sneeze and green goo splatters on the floor.

"Has this ever happened before?" McCoy asks, and Keenser shakes his head.

"He's never sick!" Scotty says. "It musta been those creatures. You saw how they were climbing all over him."

Keenser sneezes again, this time so explosively that it splatters over McCoy's shoes. With a sigh, he gets a scanner and waves it in front of the Roylan engineer.

"Viral, I'm pretty sure," he says. "You're probably right. You picked up something from the Teenaxians. It doesn't look like it is contagious for most of the crew, but I want to start you on something right away. Let me order some blood work and we'll synthesize an antibiotic as soon as we can."

At last he's ready to walk out for a promised drink with Jim. It won't be much fun—Jim's day going so badly awry, and more than that, his birthday a couple of days away.

"A party might be what this crew needs," McCoy said when Jim remarked on it earlier. "30's quite a milestone, Jim. Youngest captain in the fleet. You ought to be proud."

But Jim had brushed his idea aside. Only then had McCoy remembered the events of Jim's birth—and George Kirk's death. No party then, though the crew _could_ use a reason to celebrate after so much time together.

A compromise was this drink together in the forward bar, far smaller than the rec room and often quiet this time of day. If he hurries, Jim won't have too big of a head start on him. He takes two steps into the corridor.

"Dr. McCoy!"

"Dammit!" McCoy mutters. Not another crisis. Turning on his heel, he sees Lt. Johnson hurrying forward, a bottle in his hand.

"Sorry it took so long," the lieutenant says, "but Mr. Chekov had some sort of encryption on his locker. Took my guys awhile to crack it."

He holds the bottle out and McCoy takes it with exaggerated care. A quick twist of the top, a long sniff, and he knows that this is the good stuff. The writing on the label is, in fact, Cyrillic characters. Bourbon from Russia. Imagine that.

"Is this what you were looking for?" Lt. Johnson says.

For the first time all day, McCoy flashes a smile.

"It is indeed, Lieutenant. It is indeed."

 **Author's Notes: I promised a funny one! Hope you enjoyed it.**

 **In the chronology of missing scenes, what happens next is the explanation about the necklace. I wrote "The Necklace," a three-chapter story that explains how Nyota received the necklace from Spock, before I saw the movie, but most of it still works. The only detail that is off is that I have Spock learning about Ambassador Spock's death while he is still on the** _ **Enterprise**_ **. Spock has been asked to take a position on New Vulcan as a member of the High Council. As he and Nyota head to shore leave on the** _ **Yorktown**_ **, he tells her basically what he tells Bones in the cave on Altamid in the movie, that he feels he has an obligation to help his species, or as Bones says, "to make little Vulcans."**

 **I don't want to repost that story here as a chapter of this fic because that feels like I'm cheating everyone who has already read it. My suggestion is that you head to "The Necklace" if you haven't already read it, and then head back here for chapter 4.**

 **I don't spell it out, but I'm sure you caught what is happening with the "hiccups" in the database. That's Krall trolling through it…something he does often, reading Jim Kirk's log, for instance. We see the glitch in the movie as soon as Spock uploads the Abronath data in the archive.**

 **Thanks so much for reading! Thanks so much for reviewing!**


	4. Kalara

**Chapter Four: Kalara**

 **Disclaimer: I make no money here!**

In her dreams, Kalara sometimes hears her mother calling her. Usually she's a child again, running tough-footed across briars or hiding in clumps of rhododendron bushes in the woods behind her house, one of a series of wolf pups at her heels, its preternatural blue eyes looking into a future no one could have imagined.

"Jennifer! Suppertime! Don't make me call you again! Jennifer!"

Her mother was the only person who ever called her by her given name—except for a teacher or two who called the roll the first day of school and was quickly corrected.

"My name is Wolff," she said. Her uneasy classmates did not snicker. To do so would invite savage retribution at lunch or on the playground, Kalara's fists and feet all the weapons she needed to keep her peers in line.

When she wakes from such dreams she is disoriented for a moment. She hasn't been human in so long that walking again in that skin—as who she was a century ago—means she has to stretch out her hands, her knuckles hidden under folds of Kat'oran skin, to remember that she's no longer Jennifer Wolff, MACO ensign and then Starfleet lieutenant, stranded on the long-abandoned Fabonian homeworld of Altamid.

If she needed any reminders of home—of Earth—Altamid could not be further from the lush mountains of North Carolina where she and her brother grew up. By the time she was born in 2133, much of Appalachia was carved up into sprawling cities strung like pearls on the old Trail. Families such as hers were rare, living off the grid on public land trust forests tucked back in coves and hollows too expensive for real estate development. She knew that her ancestors had settled there long ago, though no real records existed that proved her father's claim that they were part Scots-Irish and part Choctaw, people who knew how to live well enough on what they could kill or forage.

Nor could anyone corroborate the claim that her great-grandfather fought and died in the Eugenics Wars in the 1990's, or that before that her people had served in the armies and navies of WWII, and before that the Great War, and before that were Confederate hold-outs who took sniper shots at encroaching Yankees during the Civil War 300 years before she was born.

The truth of such claims mattered less than their effect—the abiding notion in the Wolff clan that, despite their suspicion of governments in general and the United Federation of Planets government in particular, they were dyed-in-the-wool military, with an appreciation for strength and sacrifice.

As she does every day when she wakes on Altamid, Kalara finds Krall and checks on his progress in The Search. She's almost always there before Manus joins them, an unspoken competition between the two of them for Krall's favor. All those years ago, back when they were still human, she'd served with Krall in the Xindi War and was pleased when he asked for her as his chief security officer aboard the _Franklin_ when the MACO's were disbanded. Anderson Le—Manus—joined the crew of the _Franklin_ right before they shipped out, a former astro-physics professor from West Point pressed into the awkward task of stellar cartographer. Kalara had taken an immediate dislike to him—and he to her.

Yet here they are, unlikely companions, no longer looking to go home but called to a higher purpose.

For the first few months after the _Franklin_ crash landed on Altamid—pulled through the Gargarin Radiation Belt wormhole shortly after beginning their tour of duty—Krall spent most of his time scanning for Starfleet signals and sending out a series of reports—factual accounts at first of the fate of the crew, then pleading appeals for help, and finally log entries filled with fury and anguish.

The three survivors could stay alive indefinitely—that wasn't in question. The mining drones left useless and abandoned by their Fabonian creators showed them how to use the energy transference interface, and Krall turned the _Franklin's_ limited resources to scanning the skies around Altamid. Small space surveyors and scavengers and even a few passenger ships from the nearby Kat'oran system regularly passed close enough that the drone ships could pull them down, their hapless occupants then drained of their life force.

As a parting legacy, each person consumed in the energy transference left part of his molecular trace in the _Franklin_ crew, altering them into the image of the creatures they used for their own survival.

Today Krall is looking through hacked Starfleet files, these from the largest ship to venture this close to the nebula: The _Enterprise_ —with a crew more than twice the size of the _Franklin_. When she enters the room, he motions to her.

"You found something?" she asks.

"A peace treaty." Krall snarls the words in Standard, a language they almost never use anymore. Then he adds in Kat'oran, "Look at what _Enterprise_ is offering in return."

He taps part of the holovid and it doubles in size, large enough for Kalara to make out a rough-hewn circular wheel with cogs and Fabonian markings.

"The Abronath!"

Krall's head tilts and he bares his teeth.

"At last. After so much searching."

Without turning around, Kalara hears Manus behind her.

"Krall, allow me the honor of retrieving it. I can take the swarm—"

"No!" Kalara says. "They would be forewarned if you press through the nebula. Our chance would be lost."

Krall's eyes—reminiscent of those wolf eyes from long ago—tick from Kalara to Manus and back again.

"You will go," he says to Kalara. "In a single ship. Make them come to us instead."

His plan is so simple and elegant that Kalara knows, again, why she never questions her allegiance to Krall. She will pretend to be a desperate captain of a stranded crew. The _Enterprise_ —carrying the Abronath—can be induced to help them, a Starfleet imperative to aid the weak and helpless. Foolish, of course. The weak should fail or everyone suffers in the end.

With the help of a drone she compromises one of the propulsion units on a swarm ship, making sure that it scatters an ion signature back to Altamid. By the time she is within hailing distance of the _Yorktown_ listening post, her little ship is genuinely dinged and scraped from the obstacle course of asteroid particles ground to bits for millennia by the unstable gravity wells within the nebula. She doesn't have to work too hard to sound convincingly panicked.

Once she's close enough for the tractor beam to tug her through the docking entrance of _Yorktown_ , Kalara has leisure to observe the monstrosity of the space station. As round and transparent—and hopefully as fragile—as a soap bubble, it functions as a remote outpost and shipping center for the ring planets. Since Krall began picking up the first faint signals as it was built, Kalara has been interested not only in its purpose but in its design—unnatural and dizzying gravity orientation, a mishmash of military base and commercial interests—populated with more species than Kalara knew existed in this quadrant.

One of them, a bug-eyed quadraped with a handheld scanner, stands waiting as Kalara opens the hatch of the swarm ship and steps out onto the deck of the space station.

"Can you understand me?" he says, the scanner held out toward her. She catches herself before she answers in Standard. After so many years of consuming Kat'orans, Kalara is far more Kat'oran than human, and the easy Standard vowels and fricatives are now alien on her tongue. Even if she had slipped up and spoken, she's not sure she could shape the words well enough to be understood.

The quadraped—a communications officer, apparently—adjusts some settings on his scanner and holds it out again. "Keep speaking," he says. "The universal translator will start to pick up the meaning of your words soon."

His efforts to reassure her strike her as ridiculous. Still, she plays along, frowning and speaking until the UT suddenly does kick in and she hears a version of her voice speaking aloud. Attaching a voder on her collar, the communications officer then leads her to the duty officer on charge, a burly dark-haired man who smells faintly of perspiration.

"My ship!" she says, trying to sound as frightened as she can. "You must help me! My crew crashed on a planet within the nebula. As their captain, it was my duty to take this escape pod and try to find help for them. Please, we need you!"

She watches as the duty officer and the other personnel in the room communicate silently with each other, their eyes darting back and forth. Deciding whether to believe her or not, presumably. Deciding whether or not to pass her request on up the line.

In a few minutes she is escorted to a briefing room where a single woman stands behind a desk with two gray-clad Starfleet officers at the rear. An admiral? The uniforms and insignia are different than Kalara remembers, but the woman's air of authority is undeniable.

They speak for a few minutes—"We will help you," the Admiral says, and Kalara bows at the waist and apes her appreciation. She's almost ashamed at how easy it is to fool her, how soft humanity has become.

The communications officer is her escort back to the cargo deck where Kalara sees that the _Enterprise_ is being readied for departure, small workships buzzing in and out of the docking bay carrying supplies, a larger tug waiting to retract the walkway once the crew is back aboard. Kalara suppresses a feral grin at the idea of the crew scrambling to return from their leave on _Yorktown_ far too soon.

 _Soft, these people._ She came within four minutes of dying during her MACO survival training on the Luna facility all those years ago. Harder still was the gravity training on Jupiter, costing her the full range of her left wrist that troubles her even now. When the MACO's were disbanded and she became a lieutenant in Starfleet, she was hopeful that the Xindi war and the difficulty with the Romulans would keep humanity vigilant, committed to a strong military even if Starfleet wanted to bill itself as something less. Scientists. Explorers. She and the former MACO's worried aloud that this was a mistake—were occasionally cautioned for skating too close to insubordination with their protests. When Starfleet abandoned them at last, Kalara knew Krall had been right all along.

Kalara follows the officer to the entrance of the extended walkway. Standing at the gate are two security guards flanking a lean young man in a captain's uniform. As she draws closer, Kalara can see that he is watching her intensely, his eyes never wavering.

An unexpected anxiety bubbles up, something she hasn't felt in decades.

 _This is a mistake_ , she thinks. Something in the captain's demeanor alarms her, warns her to be wary. But she can't fail now. Krall and Manus and the swarm are waiting.

"Captain Kalara?"

Kalara nods. "Thank you," she says, hearing the universal translator twist her Kat'oran words into clipped Standard. For a heartbeat she stands ready to spring away if the captain sounds the alarm. Despite his youth, he looks world weary, capable of seeing through her ruse.

But no. He extends his hand instead.

"Jim Kirk," he says.

Kalara slips her fingers into his and he steps forward, his blue eyes blazing into hers.

Blue as the eyes of the wolves she called pets as a child—eyes far too trusting and sure.

 **Author's Notes: Thank you for continuing to read and support this story! Stayed tuned for more!**


	5. Short Leave

**Chapter Five: Short Leave**

 **Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, but I do play with them.**

Until he sees Nyota walking away from him at _Yorktown_ , Spock doesn't realize that she's actually walking away—not just physically but metaphorically. That he failed to understand this—that he failed to anticipate how it would make him _feel_ —catches him by surprise.

He watches her disappear into the crowd.

 _It's not too late_ , he thinks. He can catch up and talk with her further, explain that his drive to meet his responsibility to the Vulcan people shouldn't mean that he has to forgo a relationship with her. Yet even as he arranges the words he knows such an offer will not suffice, that Nyota has a resilience he lacks. She may not like his decision to find a Vulcan mate and raise Vulcan children, but she will honor it.

Whether he will be able to do so remains to be seen. He takes a step in her direction—

-and is interrupted by Dr. McCoy, his intrusion not only personal but insulting. A short jibe later, the doctor makes a parting shot _—"It's you, Spock"—_ and Spock sees a blur of gray from the corner of his eye. Without looking, he knows who is here.

Two robed Vulcans wait for his attention, their hands tucked into the sleeves of their heavy, embroidered robes. Messengers from New Vulcan, obviously.

"Commander? A word?"

A conference room is nearby but Spock leads the way to the shadow side of the space station instead, requiring several minutes of rapid walking. He needs the time to compose himself—for as soon as he saw them, he knew why they had come.

His recent distractions. His intractable headaches. And several weeks ago, a handwritten note from Ambassador Spock with the bare details of a growing and incurable illness.

 _Do not grieve,_ the Ambassador wrote. _My life has been a full one._

Still, as long as the knowledge remains unverified, it is not, in any practical sense, true. A childish notion. A human notion. Yet there it is.

In a private corner of the large observatory, Spock stops and waits for the two Vulcans. One immediately extends a PADD that Spock takes almost reverentially, the fingers of his left hand trembling slightly. For a moment he feels his face flush with shame at his lack of control.

With his thumbnail he ticks open the PADD and reads the inscription there—the Ambassador's birth and death dates, his service record, a hologram of his face.

Again Spock feels caught off guard, this time by the dates of the ambassador's service on the _Enterprise._ A long and storied career, his lengthy time on the ship feels like a rebuke.

All things change, however. If Spock leaves the _Enterprise_ , it is not because he does not find himself useful here, or valued, or even, if truth be told, content.

But the Ambassador's death leaves unfilled critical positions in several key offices in the New Vulcan regional government. Who better to step in than Spock?

The Vulcan messengers give him other letters, too, which make official the High Council's offer for him to join them. His father will be glad. As much as Sarek says he supports Spock's work in Starfleet, he's made no secret of his anxiety about the future of the Vulcan people.

"There's one thing more," one of the messengers says. "The Ambassador left certain effects for you. We have deposited them in a storage area near the docking bay. They are yours to do with as you wish." He holds out his hand and drops an old-fashioned metal key in Spock's palm.

"Thank you for bringing this to my attention," Spock says, his hand lifted into the _ta'al._

In the dim light of _Yorktown's_ "night," he looks closely at the key as the Vulcans stride away.

Without consciously considering what he is doing, he flips open his communicator with his other hand. Nyota will want to know—and more than that, he needs her beside him when the opens the storage locker. The contents will undoubtedly be…upsetting. He can't imagine not having her there.

And yet—isn't this the future he's presented her with? A life apart, her career taking her forward, and his now circumscribed by his responsibilities to his people?

He doesn't sigh, but he very nearly does. Slowly he flips the communicator closed.

Almost immediately, it beeps. For one wild moment he is sure it is Nyota, sensing through their unspoken bond that he is in distress.

"Spock here."

The voice on the other end isn't Nyota's but Scotty's.

"Sorry to interrupt your shore leave, Commander," he says, "but we have a wee bit of an emergency."

* * *

Demora Sulu holds a spoon of chocolate ice cream up for inspection. At four—or almost four—she's already a connoisseur of all things sweet—exotic fruits grown only on a few ring planets, gelatin that evaporates on her tongue, traditional pastries sold at one of the new bakeries near the architectural office where Ben works.

"Eat that before you make a mess," he scolds. She frowns at him briefly before turning a sunny smile to Sulu. He leans forward and takes a nibble of her ice cream. "Haven't had that in a long time," he says. Demora feeds him another bite.

"Why? Don't you have ice cream on your ship?"

"Not this good."

He sees Ben lift a paper napkin to catch a wayward drip of ice cream on her chin. A simple action, the kind of thing Ben does a hundred times a day. The tenderness—and Demora's unthinking acceptance of it—puts an ache in Sulu's heart. The very ordinary day-to-day things that make up the bulk of being a parent—snippets of unfinished conversations and storybooks read and puzzles halfway finished before bedtime, motions so inconsequential that no one ever remembers them as singular events but which collectively comprise what it means to be family. He misses those. He knows that his career is requiring a sacrifice that isn't fair, that he regrets even as he chooses it.

"What _do_ you eat on your ship?" Demora says, taking another bite.

"She worries that you aren't eating," Ben says. Apparently they've had this conversation before.

Sulu runs his hand over the top of Demora's head. Her hair is baby fine and silky, and too long. "You need a haircut," he says. Demora flicks her head away from his hand.

Ice cream finished, she sets the spoon with exaggerated care in the bowl and licks her lips. "Now I'm ready," she announces.

Sulu darts Ben a glance. The last time he'd had shore leave was over two months ago on a bare-bones Starfleet outpost near the Mirana wormhole. Ben and Demora had taken a schooner there for what turned out to be a cramped holiday in rustic quarters with no privacy, but no one complained. Their longer scheduled resupply stop at _Yorktown_ would be the respite they needed.

"Ready for what?" Sulu asks, and Demora jumps to her feet, takes his hand, and heads out the door of the sweet shop.

"I want to show you my school," she says over her shoulder. "And my friend Sa'ana. I told him I would take you to his house."

Dropping his hand, Demora runs ahead, Ben and Sulu picking up the pace to keep her in sight.

It's the first private moment they've had—if being surrounded by hundreds of people on the retail tarmac of a space station counts. They kiss swiftly once, the way people do who are distracted by a running child, and then Ben takes Sulu's hand and tugs him forward.

"We'll lose her if we aren't careful," he says. "She's absolutely fearless. It worries me sometimes."

In his fantasies this is what he imagines life should be like—watching Demora's mop of dark hair slide across her narrow shoulders as she runs, Ben's face turned just enough to catch that sly look in his eye that means he has something fun planned for the three of them later—an old-fashioned movie night or a walk in the _Yorktown's_ extensive botanical gardens. Ben's thoughtful this way, never complaining about giving up an established architectural firm on Earth to move to this remote starbase—all to keep this family intact.

Demora stops abruptly and points to a large holovid monitor directly ahead. A three-dimensional image of the _Enterprise_ hovers in the air.

"Your ship!" Demora squeals. At his side, Sulu feels Ben grow wary.

Underneath the image of the _Enterprise_ is a scrolling crew manifest.

"Something's up," Sulu says, pulling his communicator out of his pocket. Before he can open it, it beeps.

"Report to your duty station," the automated voice says loud enough for everyone around them to hear. "Shore leave is canceled."

* * *

The nearest bar isn't necessarily the best one, but Leonard McCoy needs a drink. Hell, he hadn't asked to overhear that little interchange between Spock and Uhura, but there they were, and there he was. Not a surprise, not really. Spock's been moping around for weeks, and Uhura has, too, though neither one has said much to him about why.

Maybe people out here in service weren't made to be in relationships. Maybe no one is, really. Too much work. Too easy to get things wrong.

He'd said something along those lines to the last woman he'd dated, a neurosurgeon who had a private practice in San Francisco and hospital privileges at the large Federation facility near the Academy.

"You think love is work?" she said. They had sat across from each other in a restaurant near the Embarcadero designed to evoke the feel of the 1950s—plush red wallpaper, mahogany tables, lighting so dim that McCoy wasn't certain what he was drinking. Some froufrou cocktail he let her order for him—something cloying and disagreeable on his tongue. He swallowed it and nodded.

"Hard work," he said. She laughed—that pretty, smart, ambitious neurosurgeon who leaned into him slightly as she took a sip of her drink.

She knew he was divorced—knew he had a daughter—but had asked no questions about either when he'd mentioned them. He'd been disappointed at her lack of curiosity, implying, as it did, a lack of something more serious. Empathy, or the capacity to listen. Within a couple of minutes, he knew there was nothing here that could ever blossom into a relationship.

"You think I'm joking," he said, looking down at the curve of her cheek. "But if you're honest, you know I'm right. What are you doing right now? Probably the same thing I'm doing. Drinking our booze and counting down the time until one or the other makes a graceful exit back to our insular lives. Onward and upward. Separate and separated."

He knew he sounded drunker than he felt, that she was offended. A few minutes later she gathered her coat and left. After that he saw her occasionally in staff meetings but they never said more than a perfunctory hello.

He makes his way through the crowd to the _Yorktown_ bar. Over the noise he hears a familiar voice.

"I'll have a Klabnian fire tea," Uhura says.

McCoy sidles up beside her and says, "Forget that mouthwash. Let me buy you something decent."

"What are you doing here?"

"Same as you. Drowning my sorrows."

"I'm hardly drowning," Uhura says. The barkeep sets a tall glass of amber-colored liquid on the bar in front of her. Taking a sip, she puckers up and makes a face for McCoy's benefit. "To think I used to drink these all the time in my Academy days."

"Yeah, well, you were young and foolish back then."

She laughs. "I'm still young."

"But not so foolish."

At that her face falls. "I wouldn't say that."

McCoy motions to the barkeep and orders bourbon, neat, and then watches as he pulls a bottle from under the counter and pours a chaser-sized glass.

"The good stuff, huh?" McCoy says. Uhura laughs again and they clink glasses. "I wouldn't call it the good stuff, but it will do," McCoy adds. "You know, if you want to talk about it—"

Uhura gives a small shake of her head. "I'm good," she says, looking up. "Really. I'm good. Or I will be."

"I'd be glad to—"

Her hand darts out and he feels her warm fingers like a bracelet around his wrist. "Thank you," she says simply, and he knows that if he presses her further, he'll put a crack in her resolve.

"Fine then," he says. "Maybe you'd like to hear about my grand plans for our time aboard this monstrosity. I hear they have an excellent opera house and I might take in a show. Or there's a science museum I've been meaning to check out. And the dance contest. Did I ever mention that I am a champion ballroom dancer?"

Soon they are both laughing, large gulping whoops that belie the earlier tension. When she can catch her breath again, Uhura says, "No, seriously. What are you going to do on your leave?"

And suddenly he wants to be serious and not silly, making an authentic human connection to someone he cares about. He pulls his communicator from his pocket and taps it.

"This is what I'm going to do," he says. When Uhura gives him a quizzical look, he says, "Make a call to my best girl."

"I thought—"

"Joanna," he says. "My daughter. I promised her I'd call before her birthday. Has the same birthday as our captain. Turns 12 this year, I think." He pauses, sad that he isn't sure. "Yeah, 12. Young enough to still love her old man."

"You must really miss her."

To his surprise, he's suddenly blinking back tears.

"I suspect you know something about how that feels," he says. He upends his bourbon as both their communicators go off. Startled, they make eye contact.

"We're being called back to the ship," Uhura says.

"Thank goodness," McCoy grouses. He steps aside for Uhura to precede him out of the bar. "I thought this shore leave would never end."

 **Author's notes: Just a peek at a few of the crew and what they were up to on the** _ **Yorktown**_ **. Now we're ready for action!**

 **Hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for letting me know your thoughts! (And yes, the title is a pun...SHORT LEAVE.)  
**


	6. House of Cards

**Chapter Six: House of Cards**

 **Disclaimer: This is where I play, not where I work.**

Although he hasn't been on a Federation ship in almost a century, Krall recognizes the familiar design—recessed lighting panels, reinforced deck plating, bulkheads at regular intervals along the wide corridors. The _Franklin_ , long ago abandoned when Krall moved his quarters into the Fabonian drone hangar, is smaller than this ship—this _Enterprise_ —but the layout is similar. The subtle vibration of dilithium crytals powering the starship's warp core tells him the direction of engineering and he heads there.

In another life, in a long ago world, he walked the corridors of ships like this, first as a MACO attached to a Starfleet crew after the Xindi attack killed seven million people on Earth, and later as the captain of the _Franklin_. He had been human then, of course, and the scale and size of those ships felt not just comfortable but _right_. Now in his kat'oran skin he strides through corridors that feel cramped and small, a reflection of their puny human creators.

From the end of the corridor Manus calls out.

"The archives are this way," he says, pointing to a holographic map on a directional kiosk. With his accompanying drones, Krall takes a step forward and almost stumbles.

He hasn't had an energy transference in 36 hours—not since the last of the kat'oran spice merchants plucked from an unlucky cargo ship were consumed. Ordinarily Krall can go for weeks if necessary before recharging, but the excitement of discovering the whereabouts of the Abronath and the energy required to mount the attack is draining him faster than he expected.

"Go ahead," he calls to Manus. "I will meet you there."

Sprawled in the corridor are the bodies of Starfleet personnel felled by earlier drone pistol fire. Most are dead, but Krall sees one crewman blinking, merely stunned. Pulling out a slender transference interface cable on his exosuit, Krall clamps it to the red-shirted ensign's neck. Almost immediately the ensign's lifeforce begins to flow into Krall's hungry body. In less than a minute, the crewman is little more than a husk, and Krall drops him to the floor.

This human energy feels different than Krall's more usual diet of kat'orans and other ring planet natives. _More refined. Less unfocused._ He licks his lips like a feline tasting the air.

By the time Krall makes his way to the archives, Manus has already blasted through the doors and is calling up the schematics and opening the drawer where the Abronath is stored.

How stupid these humans are, not to realize the power of this machine. Krall picks it up almost reverentially.

A blur of motion to the side and he realizes he is being observed.

"After him!" Krall shouts, and the nearest drones take off after the intruder. Clutching the Abronath, Krall walks back through the destroyed door of the archives and heads to engineering where his runabout waits.

Or he tries to. The ship lurches and sparks from newly exposed wiring flare around him. Another sudden lurch—proof that the swarm is destroying the ship as he instructed—and there ahead of him is the man he's been eavesdropping on for months now, the captain of this ship—James T. Kirk.

In person he is smaller than Krall had imagined, but more determined—his fists flailing and his right knee shoved with surprising force into Krall's abdomen. No matter. This captain will be dispatched soon—and all the other humans and aliens on _Yorktown_ with him. And the rest of the Federation after that, if it takes Krall another century to put things back to rights.

The deck buckles under his feet and Krall nearly topples over as the artificial gravity wavers. The captain takes advantage of the resulting chaos and knocks the box containing the Abronath from Krall's hand. From the corner of his eye Krall watches it skitter across the floor. The ship rolls again and Kirk scoops up the box and runs.

Chasing him involves a kind of pleasure Krall hasn't felt for years—the thrill of tracking a worthy enemy, the very real possibility of failure as the walls turn into floors and loose debris tumbles and trips him in his pursuit. Some of his drone attendants discharge long lancing arcs of phaser fire.

Yet the captain manages to elude him somehow.

Krall knows where he's heading. Engineering, to separate the saucer from the drive section of the _Enterprise._ It's what Krall would have done to protect his crew—all those years ago when his actions were still hobbled by Federation regulations.

Back when the megalopolis of London was still home—back when he still answered to the name Balthazar Edison.

"I named you Balthazar," his mother told him, "because you will rule the world one day!" It was a heavy, lofty name for the scrawny young boy, but he took his mother's injunction seriously, imagining himself as the namesake of that ancient Babylonian king. He excelled in primary school, won a scholarship to a military academy, and rose quickly through the ranks as a clever strategist and serious thinker. A growth spurt at 15 gave him the height and bulk to become a formidable athlete—martial arts and boxing, mostly, but also hand-to-hand combat favored by the Military Assault Command Operations, which he joined after graduation. He counts his time as a MACO—and the sacrifices made during the Romulan War—as Earth's finest hour.

But then the Federation came into being—and its birth signaled the death of genuine honor.

This ship he walks through now is the perfect example of failed Federation pacifism. Instead of investing in R & D for defense and heavy weaponry, Starfleet has sent this ship into unknown territory relatively unarmed. Look how easily the swarm ships are destroying it! The pride of the fleet, decapitated in a matter of minutes.

His energy flagging again, Krall stops long enough to drain another crewmember.

Later, as he stands at the observation window on the stardrive as the saucer falls away, an empty box in his hand, he will think how his need for energy—his human weakness—must have allowed the captain the time to take the Abronath.

The young woman bracing herself from freefall meets his eye. He sees intelligence there, and comprehension. Briefly he considers consuming this red-clad lieutenant but a reluctant regard stays his hand. Her quick actions in separating the saucer and stardrive saved her captain and her crew. In another life, in a long ago world, he would have asked her to join the _Franklin_. Both she and Kirk—mere humans—have surprised him with their strength and cunning. He won't make that mistake again.

* * *

Once at a party, Spock spent the better part of an hour listening to a cadet from Telnar recall a near-death experience in space.

The party was mandatory—a mixer for first year students at Starfleet Academy—and until the Telnar struck up a conversation, Spock had suffered in silence—from boredom as much as from a growing sense that he might have made a mistake in turning down his appointment to the Vulcan Science Academy after all.

"I, too, find these gatherings baffling," the Telnar said by way of a greeting, his words muffled by a fleshy appendage that hung over his mouth. He was carrying two bottles of amber liquid, one of which he held out to Spock. Then he sat down with a heavy thump in an adjacent chair.

"I'm surprised they even accepted me," he said, sounding as if he was continuing an earlier conversation. Spock sniffed the bottle of liquid and followed that with a tentative sip. _Hops, yeast, malted barley, water. And something floral—orange peels or lemon zest._ Spock's Uncle David brewed beer at home in Seattle, and on summer visits over the years Spock had found the science of turning grain into alcohol interesting. He took another taste.

"I'm Tegla Anana Elginar Callan Prie," the Telnar cadet said. "The humans here call me Prie. I don't mind." He pointed his bottle toward Spock. A gesture of some kind, but Spock had no idea what it meant. Prie tipped the bottle again, this time more forcefully. "And who are you?" he said with an unmistakable exasperation in his voice.

"S'chn T'gai Spock. You may call me Spock."

Until that moment—four weeks into the academic year—Spock had never had a reason to introduce himself. Besides his professors, he spoke to no one. On his weekly subspace calls to his mother, she prefaced every conversation by asking if he was _making friends,_ and though he was dismissive, he knew she was concerned. If he engaged in a longer conversation with this Telnar cadet, he would be able to reassure his mother the next time they spoke that he was neither alone nor lonely—or at least had not been for the duration of the party.

He settled back, his beer growing disagreeably warm in the bottle in his hand, and waited for the Telnar cadet to continue.

"The first time I was in space," the cadet said, "was on the trip here to Earth to come to the Academy. If I had known what space travel is like, I never would have applied to Starfleet."

Before Spock could react or ask for clarification, the cadet went on. "It was a Daemon-class yacht. Three crew, I think. Fifteen passengers, including me. We ran into an ion storm three light years out from Telna," he said. "The noise was terrible, but the electrical discharge inside the ship was worse. I thought my skin was on fire."

Spock had traveled multiple times from Vulcan to Earth and back, occasionally running into ion storms. Unpleasant, certainly, but the Telnar's description seemed exaggerated. He raised one eyebrow in obvious skepticism.

"You don't believe me," the Telnar said. "You can check the records yourself. The _M'Rell_. Lost in space 48 days ago. A hull breach, the authorities think. I think so, too. I _heard_ it. Metal pulling apart. But I felt it before that. I _felt_ it! All of a sudden the fire on my skin turned to cold prickles, and I couldn't breathe."

"The ship was depressurizing," Spock said. The Telnar nodded.

"That's what they told me later. We were busy getting into the escape pods and I don't remember anything else after that." He took a long swig of his beer. "I don't ever want to be in that situation again. If I didn't have to get back on a ship to go home, I'd quit and leave tomorrow."

That long ago conversation flashes through Spock's mind like the flicker of a lightbulb.

 _The ship is about to fail._

"Run, Doctor!" he yells. "We have to abandon ship!"

When the first intruders slammed their personal craft into the _Enterprise's_ hull, Dr. McCoy's emergency transceiver indicated casualties on C Deck. At a glance from the captain, Spock knew that he was to accompany him, and as they exited the bridge, he pulled out his hand phaser. As the turbolift door closed, his last sight was of Nyota at her station, one hand pressing her earpiece closer, the fingers of her other hand frantically acknowledging calls from all over the ship.

The carnage had been immediately clear, the doctor's help coming far too late to help many of the fallen crew. Furthermore, the attack had been sudden and without cause—or so it had seemed until Spock saw the intruders taking the Fabonian artifact from the archives.

"Are you out of your mind!" Dr. McCoy yells. "I can't abandon my post!"

Drone laser fire erupts at the end of the corridor. The artificial gravity fluctuates again, hard, and both Spock and McCoy land facedown on the deck as it tilts and rolls them backward.

Looking around, Spock sees that the nearest escape pod is open and green-lit. If Dr. McCoy argues with him further, he will have to forcibly push him inside.

Another sudden lurch and both men tumble into the pod. The hatch slams shut and Spock feels the pod's thrusters come online, sending them away from the abandoned ship. From the viewport Spock watches as C Deck crumples like a house of cards collapsing on itself. It's what he had known was going to happen when he heard that telltale shearing of the bulkheads, the hair on the back of his neck rising as failing electrical circuits released their charged particles and the atmosphere began rushing toward a distant breach.

Explaining all that to the doctor would have taken too much time.

Now they both stand dazed, the pod whirling around like a spinning top. Spock braces himself and stands at the viewport, waiting as each revolution of the pod brings the _Enterprise_ briefly back into view where the small attack ships are plowing into its hull, dismantling it bit by bit.

The escape pod is programmed to soft land in the nearest habitable area. Once it does, Spock can augment the pod's homing signal to track back through the nebula to the _Yorktown_. The civilian defense craft assigned to patrol it can pick their way here—not without difficulty, but it is possible. By then the escaping crew should be reasonably safe on the surface of Altamid, and the attackers—if their objective was the destruction of the _Enterprise_ —will have departed.

All this goes through his mind as the pod revolves half a turn. Closing his eyes, Spock tries to slow the hammering of his heart—and with it, to get a sense of Nyota. _If she's alive—_

But he doesn't have time to complete that thought. Something slams so hard into the escape pod that Spock is thrown off his feet and into the control panels. Beside him, Dr. McCoy says, "What the hell!"

And two times in one day Spock hears the sickening sound of tearing metal and rushing air of a hull breach.

 **Author's Notes: This part of** _ **Star Trek Beyond**_ **went by so fast that I've probably gotten some things out of order. Thanks for indulging me and continuing to read anyway! I hope this missing scenes story is as much fun for you to read as it is for me to write.**

 **Thanks for reviewing! Your words are always encouraging and helpful!**


	7. Descent

**Chapter Seven: Descent**

 **Disclaimer: I do not profit from this work, alas.**

Unlike Jim Kirk, Leonard McCoy is no adrenaline junkie. During his rotation on the trauma unit in medical school, he saw enough serious head injuries to make him scold Jim about the dangers of hoverbikes. He's set enough broken limbs from unlucky parrises squares players at the Academy that he sent a letter to the dean recommending the game be permanently banned. If he never has to have his innards scrambled by a transporter again, he can die a happy man.

He wasn't always this way. As a kid, he didn't stop climbing trees after he fell and broke his right arm when he was seven.

He played football all through school and was good enough to be recruited by Ole Miss. His tour of the campus convinced him he would be comfortable there—the swelter of humid afternoons, the familiar drone of cicadas as the sun began to set reminding him so much of Georgia—home—that he turned down the proffered athletic scholarship and a position as a wide receiver for the Rebels but enrolled anyway, paying full fare for the privilege of majoring in pre-med. Still, he played intramural football his first two years there, once on a sprained ankle.

He even—briefly—owned a hoverbike in college, though he will never tell Jim Kirk that. It was a tepid love affair, McCoy never quite getting the hang of the thing. After he took a nasty spill and left a layer of skin on the asphalt, he sold the bike and bought something even scarier, a DXS sports craft, the kind you could find on the racing circuit making amateur pilots some extra cash on the weekends.

It was beautiful. Sleek, angular, a top hatch with a forward hinge and polarized glass, it was faster than any ground car and faster than most personal aircraft. In a pinch he could carry a passenger in the aft storage section, but it was designed as a single person ship, primarily used for short intracoastal jaunts but able to leave orbit if necessary.

The controls were the real draw. Each ship was equipped with an interface that actually learned its pilot's body language. The seat reminded him of his hoverbike's saddle—with foot pedals and hand gears so sensitive that he could almost simply _think_ where he wanted to go. Such an intuitive machine was an invitation to be reckless—and he was, occasionally neglecting to file flight plans and, more often than not, exceeding the posted speed limits.

In hindsight the crash was almost inevitable. One Friday afternoon his senior year at the university, he and three friends took off from the transport hub in Oxford and headed west, planning to rendezvous and camp in a wilderness preserve in Wyoming. Barely ten minutes after take-off, McCoy spotted one of his friends speeding up behind him and another one coming abreast on his port side. A challenge to race—and without thinking about it, McCoy engaged his auxiliary thruster and shot ahead.

The three speeders leapfrogged in a series of increasingly close maneuvers until someone—the investigators never sorted out who—clipped the wing of another craft and all three spiraled out of control to the ground.

The fourth friend had been following at a safe distance and called for help. The emergency crew arrived too late for one of the pilots who was burned in the crash and died. The other pilot spent the next six weeks in rehab with a broken pelvis. McCoy escaped with superficial lacerations that needed a few stitches.

For weeks afterwards he walked around stunned. Then the shock wore off and he walked around so guilt-ridden that he could hardly bring himself to speak, not even to the gentle therapist who met with him every other day.

At the end of the semester, he blew off his final exams and went home. No one mentioned the crash, but McCoy could see that his mother was suffering for him. His father, who kept crazy hours as a full-time physician, tried to get him to open up, overtures which McCoy politely—but firmly—rebuffed.

He was so certain that he had failed all his final courses and failed to graduate that when his diploma came in the mail, he was startled.

"Maybe you need to think about what to do now," his father said. It was a loving push—McCoy knew that—but he didn't feel up to starting medical school in the fall. A friend was dead because of his carelessness. Some price had to be paid. Giving up his own plans seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

He wasn't housebound, not technically, but he rarely ventured outside and never accepted requests from friends and family to meet up somewhere for a meal or conversation. When his father found him a job as an orderly in the local hospital, McCoy took it, more to reassure his father than because he wanted to work. The job was mindless physical labor—lifting patients, mopping floors, fetching and carrying for the nurses who ran the show—and it was exactly what he needed. For hours he could lose himself in the strain and stress and not think about anything other than what was in front of him at that moment.

He stayed there eleven months. Then one day he woke up and noticed that the sky was bluer than he could remember it ever being, the air more bracing, the sunlight a degree brighter. For the first time, he was bored at work. His sense of purpose and his contentment with being an orderly—moving and lifting and carrying and cleaning—had slipped away before he noticed. It was time to move on.

That afternoon when his shift ended, he stopped by the dealership to buy a ground car. When the dealer tried to steer him to the fancier, faster personal aircraft, McCoy shook his head firmly.

"I don't like to get anywhere fast," he said. He said it like he said so many things, as a joke, but he realized it was true. He'd come out the other side of a tragedy more cautious than he'd ever expected to be.

He doesn't like it, but it is who he is.

Which is why he's so surprised to find himself whirling around inside an escape pod watching in near disbelief as the _Enterprise_ is torn to shreds by attack vessels that appear for all the world like a swarm of hornets or angry bees.

"Look!" he says to Spock, pointing out the viewport. Escape pods all over the ship are popping out of the _Enterprise_ like corks. Some of the swarm ships break formation and intercept the pods. "They're getting our crew!" he shouts.

But Spock has no time to reply. With a violent shudder, the pod hatch blows open and two faceless drones drop in.

Adrenaline junkie or not, McCoy goes into physical overdrive. Swinging wildly, he feels his fist impact the nearest drone's faceless helmet and it staggers backward. Vaguely he is aware that Spock is dispatching the second drone, actually lifting it over his head and slamming it to the deck of the pod. To McCoy's surprise, the lights of both drones blink out and the one near him slumps over. With a kick to its side for good measure, McCoy looks up at the open hatch and the drone ship tethered outside. If this were open space instead of the thin Altamid atmosphere, he and Spock would have been blown out by now.

As it is, the escape pod is useless. Pulling himself through the destroyed hatch, McCoy follows Spock up into the swarm ship. As soon as he is inside, the bulkhead closes and the telltale hiss of pressurized air makes breathing much easier.

Before he can settle in, the swarm ship lurches violently and both he and Spock are thrown against the hull. Several pieces of metal fly loose from control panels and become projectiles inside the cabin. From the overhead viewport McCoy sees other swarm ships jostle and spark nearby.

 _That long ago race—the resulting disaster._

"Spock! We've gotta move this thing! Get up there and get us going!"

Another sudden lurch, this one sending the swarm ship spinning away from the damaged escape pod.

"Spock!" McCoy screams, but Spock either won't or can't reply. Sparing a glance in his direction, McCoy sees him hunched over one of the control panels, his face turned away.

"Dammit," McCoy mutters, "I'm a doctor, not a fighter pilot!"

Scrambling up and onto the central seat, he reaches for the hand controls and gives an experimental squeeze. The little ship dips starboard with a jerky motion. Another squeeze, and the ship swings port.

The footrests are too far away to reach comfortably. Tapping one with his toe, he manages to get the ship moving forward. At least now they won't be sitting ducks as the other swarm ships pass around them.

It comes back to him with a rush—the excitement of speed, the thrill of having a machine so responsive to his wishes. With muscle memory his hands and feet guide the little ship away from the roiling pack of the swarm, McCoy navigating closer to the planet below. A swarm ship is suddenly behind them. It noses closer but then peels away, apparently satisfied that they pose no threat.

From this distance the planet looks like an ordinary desert landscape, but as McCoy aims them through the turbulence of the atmosphere, he is disheartened by the lack of level ground anywhere in sight. Jagged mountains stacked like fat porcupine quills make a soft landing unlikely.

As if on cue, the ship's engine spits and stutters, probably out of fuel. His stomach in knots, McCoy shouts, "Spock, brace yourself!"

The engine cuts off, an eerie silence in its stead. Keeping his grip on the hand controls, McCoy tries to steer the ship by adjusting the ailerons on the wings. He skirts past one mountain peak and dodges another, and then another, the swarm ship continuing its barely controlled descent.

 _So this is how it's going to end,_ McCoy thinks, his hands beginning to shake.

Wispy clouds loom up, obscuring the surrounding landscape, and McCoy almost throws his arms up in defeat. Then the clouds part and dead ahead he sees an opening through the mountain range. A river—or more accurately, a creek—flowing in a languid curve between sandy banks. He presses his left foot on the pedal to begin braking but the ship hurtles downward without pause.

"Hang on!" he yells.

The swarm ship hits the ground with a bone-rattling judder and continues forward through the creek, a wall of water splashing over the viewport. The scrape and whine of metal as the ship runs aground makes McCoy hold his breath—but at last the ship stops its rocking and comes to rest. He releases the top hatch and clambers up the ladder.

For a second time in his life he's managed to land a personal aircraft reasonably safely under disastrous conditions. One day his luck will run out.

But not today, or at least, not right now. He steps awkwardly and his ankle gives way, almost tumbling him into the river. Behind him he hears Spock scrambling through the open hatch.

McCoy touches his forehead and pulls away a bloody finger. Nothing a few stitches won't fix.

"We've been damn lucky," he says. "We're like cats using up our nine lives."

He waits for Spock to take him to task—a lecture on the nature of luck, perhaps, or umbrage at being compared to a cat. When he says nothing, McCoy turns to look at him.

And that's when his luck finally runs out.

 **Author's Notes: This chapter was supposed to be three short descent stories stitched together but Bones pushed everyone else aside. Sorry about that! I'll get to those other pieces as soon as I can!**

 **Thanks for all the kind words and encouragement!**


	8. Going Down

**Chapter Eight: Going Down**

 **Disclaimer: No money made here!**

"Why aren't the escape pods working!"

The captain's voice on the intercom is hard to hear over the sound of phaser fire in the engineering corridor. His tone, however, is easy to hear. He's furious—or as close to furious as Scotty has ever heard him.

Instead of answering, Scotty lets his fingers fly over the electronic schematics of his workstation, numbers scrolling by almost too fast to comprehend.

Or they would be for anyone less familiar with the engineering specs of the _Enterprise_.

"No, no, no, no," he mutters, tapping in some calculations. More scrolling numbers confirm his worst suspicions. When he gets back to Earth— _if_ he gets back to Earth—he's going to have a long, unpleasant talk with the designers of the warp core energy feedback loop.

"The warp reserve's dedicating the energy loop to the drive," he says into the intercom. "That's shorting out some of the escape pods. If we can separate the saucer—"

"The auxiliary power will kick in!" The captain finishes Scotty's assessment. "And that might draw the enemy ships away so the pods can get clear. I'll take care of it!"

Ordinarily, escape pod ignition rates a priority on energy needs. However, the damage from the intruders is so pervasive, done so swiftly, that the warp drive is drawing down most of the power. Once the stardrive is out of the equation after saucer separation, the energy can be rerouted, igniting the escape pods.

All this Scotty knows in an instant. That the captain makes the same intuitive leap is a testament to his intelligence and knowledge of how the ship works.

"Evacuate now!" Scotty yells to the engineers still manning their stations. "When the pods come online, you need to be ready!"

Only one pod is inside engineering, so most of his staff head out into the corridor to the pods there. Keenser pauses by the nearby escape pod and turns to Scotty.

"Get in there!" Scotty shouts. The little Roylan engineer shakes his head. His frustration mounting, Scott waves his arms wildly. "This is no time for heroics, man! Go! I'll follow you as soon as I can!"

Keenser's projectile eyes tick back and forth. For one wild moment, Scotty knows that Keenser will insist on staying with him, even if it means going down with the ship.

Debris rains on their heads as the _Enterprise_ shudders under the swarm ship assault. Each deck reports hull breaches and atmospheric decompression. The artificial gravity fluctuates at irregular intervals.

"Go! That's an order!"

Keenser might not like it, but he won't disobey a direct order. Scotty takes a moment to watch him enter the pod and close the hatch behind him. Almost at once the pod fires and is gone.

Scotty turns back to the problem of rerouting the energy supply from the stardrive.

The captain should have managed the separation by now. From the sounds of it, the active fighting is getting closer. Scotty pushes away the thought that something dire might have happened to delay Captain Kirk.

The noise of shouting is suddenly right outside the main engineering room. The surveillance monitor shows the intruders hammering against the sealed doors. Their lumbering gait suggests they aren't human. Robots? Their faceless helmets suggest they might not be alive.

He has little time for reflection. The hammering at the door is more insistent.

The weapons locker has already been emptied, but Scotty keeps a sidearm in his office. He starts across the room, dodging a photon torpedo swinging wildly on the end of a gantry as the ship careens to starboard.

Then he stops in his tracks. _The photon torpedo_.

Khan Noonien Singh had hidden 72 Augments in modified torpedo tubes. Surely Montgomery Scott can hide a desperate engineer in one.

Phaser fire hits the door and the metallic sound of boots starts down the corridor. Scotty lowers the torpedo with a winch and opens the side panel.

"Now or never," he mutters, grabbing a fistful of wires and yanking several loose. The indicator light goes out and the weapon is no longer armed. Or so he hopes.

Opening the main body of the tube is hard work requiring a pneumatic screwdriver, but in fifteen seconds he has it lifted up and himself curled inside. As the intruders rush in, Scotty closes the tube, and with his jerry-rigged control PADD, instructs the winch to lift and place the torpedo in the bay. The press of a button and he's off, his stomach lurching wildly.

Navigation is almost impossible, but Scotty can control the speed and angle of descent. Too steep and he burns up in the friction of Altamid's atmosphere. Too shallow and the torpedo will skip over the atmosphere like a stone skipping over a pond, ending up back in space and in the path of the intruder ships.

For all intents and purposes, he's flying blind. Even if he did have a topographic map of the planet's surface, he has no way to make course corrections.

The torpedo bucks suddenly and Scotty hears the telltale whistle of escaping air. He must have hit some space debris on the way down—that, or he's close enough to the surface to scrape through the jagged mountains.

Another jolt, and then a stretch of whining and rocking as the torpedo tube slides across the ground until it stops, suddenly quiet.

Scotty whoops with relief. Safe at last!

He pops the hatch and clambers out on top of the tube—and watches in disbelief as it starts sliding toward the edge of a thousand-meter drop.

A mad scramble over the end of the torpedo, the sickening feeling of flying through the air, his fingers grasping for purchase on the dusty rock outcrop, his feet swinging free—

He hears the distant roar and snap of the torpedo crashing below. His fingers slip a fraction.

Tangles of purple vines snake along the edge of the cliff. One hand gripping the rock, with his other he clutches at the vegetation. When it doesn't give way, he uses it as a handhold to hoist himself up.

On top of the cliff, he rolls onto his back and catches his breath. The pads of his fingers are raw, his ribs bruised, his head spinning.

 _Not much worse than after a night of friendly pub brawling back in his Aberdeen days._

Getting shakily to his feet, he reaches for his communicator.

And comes up with nothing.

With no communicator, he has little chance of being rescued or finding the crew. With a sigh, he looks over the side of the cliff where dust from the torpedo impact billows up.

There's no other option but to climb down and search the wreckage.

When he gets back to Earth— _if_ he gets back to Earth—he's going to have a hell of a story when he treats himself to a draft or three at his favorite bar.

* * *

 _Captains go down with their ships._

Centuries of tradition in that phrase, hundreds of examples from history of captains standing solitary on the deck of their sinking ships as their crew rowed away to safety.

It's the central lesson of the _Kobayashi Maru_ test—that a captain must be willing face death before he can lead.

Once upon a time he didn't believe that.

He still doesn't. Not really.

Jim Kirk thinks of that as the last of the bridge crew take their places in personal escape pods. Sulu, Chekov, the alien Kalara—Jim watches them all, or more accurately, watches _over_ them all, the responsibility for their safety a heavy weight in his chest.

He doesn't have to go down with the _Enterprise_ —not in any physical sense—but he has trouble breathing in his escape pod as he watches his ship die, the mountains of the planet below rushing up and knicking the saucer. It skitters for a few moments across the tops of jagged hills and then plows into a valley, settling unevenly right side up.

The last person off the _Enterprise_ , he is already so close to the surface of the planet that the attack ships either ignore him or don't see him. Most of his crew, Jim knows, were gathered up in their escape pods. If the attackers took the trouble to collect them, surely they are alive….

Could that be the singular purpose of this obvious trap? Lure the _Enterprise_ to Altamid to kidnap the crew? Something in that assessment feels wrong, or is missing an essential piece. What about the Fabonian artifact? Spock said the attackers took it from the ship archives.

The attackers were coordinated and strategic in their choice of which parts of the _Enterprise_ to puncture. Navigation first, the nacelles sheared away more quickly than he could have thought possible. Life support next, and individual decks blasted so hard that parts of the ship crumbled and collapsed into rubble. If taking the crew was the object of the attack, why not simply target the weapons array and then board with a minimum of casualties?

The alien captain, Kalara, said that her ship crash landed here. According to her, she came through the nebula in an attempt to find rescue for her shipwrecked crew—yet what captain would leave a crew behind to fend for themselves? He'd dismissed that concern as a cultural difference, yet other parts of her story hadn't felt right either. What were the odds that she could have navigated an escape pod safely back through the same nebula asteroid field that proved such a problem for her ship?

All lies, obviously. Or they should have been obvious. Would have been, perhaps, if he hadn't fallen into believing a bigger lie: the lie that the five-year mission is humdrum and routine, mere episodes to be gotten through with boredom. He'd let his attention drift elsewhere—an inexcusable lapse of focus.

His fault this happened. Now it's his responsibility to find his crew.

The soft landing is a misnomer, the nose of Jim's pod plowing deep into the soil of a canopied forest. Releasing the safety harness that holds him in, he tests his arms and legs experimentally. Nothing broken, though he's bitten his tongue.

A gauge near his head indicates a breathable atmosphere so he pops the hatch and listens before stepping outside. Nothing but natural sounds—the susurration of the wind through the trees, an irregular low-pitched coo that might be some kind of wildlife.

"Hello!" he shouts. The trees and thick carpet of leaves and long pine-like needles on the forest floor keep his voice from echoing—and probably from traveling very far. He looks around for an elevated area to climb. "Hello?" he calls again as he takes careful steps up to the top of a sparsely wooded hill.

Stretching before him is a vista that under other circumstances he might have called beautiful—lofty trees as large as pillars in an ancient cathedral, their branches meeting overhead. Puffy, feathered seed chaff floats gently in the breeze.

Twenty meters straight ahead is an _Enterprise_ escape pod. His boots skittering on the slippery carpet of leaves, Jim makes his way down the hill, pulling his phaser from his holster.

Kalara, unhurt, steps out.

 _His ship—the people under his command._ He takes responsibility for what happened to them, but he blames Kalara, too. Jim's stomach knots up and he aims his phaser at Kalara's head.

Her words are a jumble, the universal translator a beat behind.

"Captain Kirk!" Chekov's voice behind him has a note of alarm.

"You knew this was a trap!"

Even as he listens to Kalara's halting acknowledgement, he's aware of his young navigator watching him. As angry as Jim is, as ready to take out his frustrations on this alien, his first duty is to his crew, conscious that he is first and foremost the person they look to for guidance. Chekov's eyes on him now help steady his hand.

So, too, does a shameful memory of repeatedly striking Khan on Qo'nos, a loss of control that left Jim with two fractured knuckles.

When Kalara says that she is working to protect her captured crew, Jim lowers the phaser. He won't—he _can't_ —argue with a captain's duty.

Chekov's tricorder has too narrow a range to pick up handheld communicator signals, but the _Enterprise_ saucer might be able to.

"Mr. Chekov," he says, keeping an eye on Kalara, "let's climb to the top of that embankment and try the scanners again."

"The range will still be—"

"Let's give it a try anyway," Jim says. To his credit, Chekov says, "Aye, Captain," though he is clearly skeptical. Kalara starts after them and Jim waves her back.

"This won't take long," he says. He turns and starts up the embankment, Chekov at his heels.

As soon as he thinks they are out of earshot, he stops. "Hold out your tricorder and pretend to scan with it."

"Captain?"

"Just do it. When we get to the ship, set the communication directional array to wide-beam. I have a hunch she's going to try to communicate with whoever sent her. Your job is to track her when she does."

"It was a trap?"

"I won't make that mistake again. Now let's go find the _Enterprise_."

 **Author's Notes: I apologize for including some actual snippets of scenes in this "missing scenes" story, but otherwise this would be too choppy to read. I hope it isn't too choppy anyway! Thank you for continuing to read and review. You make sharing my fanfiction a real joy.**


	9. Jaylah

**Chapter Nine: Jaylah**

 **Disclaimer: Not making any money here. Just having fun.**

A high-pitched pinging rouses Jaylah from her mid-day rest. Something—or someone—has tripped one of her traps. Rolling out of the cushioned bunk and landing deftly on her feet, she hurries down the corridor of her house to the command center. There on a monitor she sees that her trap at the foot of the western escarpment has been disturbed. Probably nothing—small quadrupeds graze in that area, sometimes digging up her sensors with their tubular snouts.

But Krall's drones also sweep this part of Altamid regularly. So far she's been able to hide her presence with wide-beam holographic projectors. If they realize that she's still alive—that she's slowly but systematically making her house flight-worthy again—they will take her back to Krall's compound. She gives an involuntary shudder.

No matter what set off the alarm, she has to check it out. Grabbing her charged particle club and feeling her pockets to make sure she has several mobile hologram emitters, she steps from the relative darkness of her home into the uncomfortably bright daylight.

Her home world is nothing like this one with its inhospitable mountains and muddy streams, its singular sun blistering her skin if she stays outside too long.

By contrast, her home world is cool and always dark, an interstellar planet not in orbit around any sun. The distant stars are visible in the perpetual night sky. The only light comes from two small moons, one twice the size of the other, locked in an elliptical orbit that brings them together overhead every 42 revolutions.

 _Sister Sky_ , her father called it when the moons appeared together. He never failed to insist that Jaylah come outside and look up at the double moons illuminating her world as bright as the twilight here on Altamid. Sometimes they would sit under that sky and he would tell her about other planets he knew with multiple moons, or he would promise that he would take her to see a planet with an actual sun.

Now here she is on such a planet and she can't wait to leave.

Usually when the Altamid sun is directly overhead, Jaylah curls up on her bunk, closes her eyes, and remembers the beauty of her world. For an hour every day, sometimes longer, she is still and quiet, conjuring up images of her home—a watery world with a single large land mass as flat as her palm, the air richer in helium than the oppressive atmosphere of Altamid. She misses the velvety feel of the night air saturated with dew, the rhythmic singing of water-dwelling invertebrates.

When her memories make her too homesick, she amuses herself with the video or audio files from the vast library of her house. For a long time she assumed they were recordings from the lives of the crew who landed here years ago. Indeed, some do seem to be just that, but the vast majority are something entirely different: depictions of the impossible—people and actions and places that could not—by any science that she knows—actually exist.

Her people are not _storytellers_. Why would anyone create a visual representation of something false? She struggles to think what purpose they serve. As an educational resource for young learners? Some do not pretend to be realistic but are mere animations. Did the people who flew her house find such things _entertaining_? The quantity of the files give weight to their importance.

A surprising number of them depict people like herself. _Orphans_ , they are called in the language she practices daily, her tongue pressed oddly against the roof of her mouth or rolled in an unnatural curl. In each case the loss of parents is unwelcome and catastrophic, the orphan pitched into challenges that make Jaylah feel oddly comforted.

 _A young boy holding out an empty bowl for food. Boys and girls learning to use wooden sticks or glowing batons as weapons. Orphans captured by criminals on sea vessels. Children mistreated by adults who banish them into the woods or attempt to kill them with poison fruit or flowers. Orphans who ultimately triumph with the help of friendly elders or by disguising themselves with body armor and using superior technology against their enemies._

In every case the orphans go on not simply to survive but to triumph, heroes who save their people.

She can't even save herself.

She watches or listens to these _stories_ as she purges EPS conduits and adjusts the power manifolds of her house. If she were on her crowded, heavily-populated world, she would work elbow to shoulder in close quarters, comforted by the noise and motion of others. Here in this empty house she loops a tape of the dead crew laughing and talking to keep her company.

The skitter of pebbles and the snap of branches leads her to within 100 meters of the base of the escarpment. From behind a dull-colored boulder she crouches and watches as a man not unlike the people in the videos makes his way down the last bit of rock and circles a broken metallic container on the ground. When it was whole it would have been two meters or more long, one end tapered into a blunt nose and the other with several scorched fins. An aircraft of some sort, then, though small for extended flights. Unless, of course, the man muttering and picking up pieces of equipment prefers to lie motionless while traveling.

He must have been shot down by Krall's drone ships—just as Jaylah and her father had been long ago.

Small though it is, the broken aircraft has salvageable parts she can use—relay switches or batteries or monotanium filament. If the man weren't here pacing around, she would have stripped out the necessary parts and been halfway back to her house by now.

But he's here. And technically this is his aircraft. She could barter for the parts, though she isn't sure what he might find an acceptable trade. If she were like the others who have eluded Krall's drones or escaped from his compound, she would injure or kill this man and take what she needs.

She wouldn't do that, of course. Her father taught her better.

Before she can decide what to do, she sees three armed scavengers coming over the rise. She knows them by sight, Carpazins who crash landed on Altamid during the last rainy season and have been hiding in the nearby forest. After they stole one of her food caches, Jaylah stopped helping them and made herself scarce whenever they wandered close.

Now they brandish clubs at the man in the red shirt. Without thinking, Jaylah rushes forward and warns them away.

If they are surprised at her sudden appearance, they don't show it. Instead, they turn their aggression towards her.

Tossing two emitters on the ground, Jaylah slams into one of the confused scavengers and has the satisfaction of hearing the snap of the bone in his arm as her particle stick makes contact. The shortest scavenger stumbles toward one of the holographic projections and clutches at the air. From the corner of her eye Jaylah sees the man in red balancing on the balls of his feet, ready to fight or run.

A hard thwack with her stick across the back of the third scavenger and the fight is over, her knife under the shortest scavenger's chin.

"Leave!" she shouts, and to her surprise, the man in red echoes her and gestures.

"And don't come back!" he yells. "I guess we showed them, eh, lassie."

She's never heard an actual person speaking this language and for a moment she has trouble parsing the words. He seems harmless enough, and the Carpazins will regroup soon. She darts forward to the broken vessel and pulls loose an intake valve she needs.

The man in red—Montgomery Scott, he told the Carpazins—gives a visible start. "That's Starfleet property!"

Incredible that she's just saved his life—or at least kept him in one piece—and he's objecting to her making use of things that are useless otherwise. She waves him away with her particle stick.

"But, okay, today I'm feeling generous," he says.

He steps back and throws up his hands like someone surrendering. When he does, she sees a flash of metal on his shirt. A badge of some sort—but what catches her eye is its design, like the silhouette of a rocket, or the shape of a meteor flashing across the sky.

She's seen this design before, in her house, copied again and again on consoles, boxes, uniform labels.

"Where did you get that?"

Montgomery Scott looks taken aback. "How did you learn English?"

"I learned it from my house," Jaylah says impatiently. "Where did you get that?"

She points at the badge. Montgomery Scott tips his chin down and looks.

"That? That's my Starfleet insignia. It means I'm an officer of Starfleet. Engineering division."

His words are coming too fast to understand easily, but one word jumps out. "Engineering?"

"That's right. I fix things." Montgomery Scott mimes using a spanner or some other tool.

His motions are the way one talks to a child. It is almost insulting. "I know what is engineering," Jaylah says.

But Montgomery Scott doesn't hear her annoyance. Instead, he has a question for her. "You're not with those that killed my ship, are you?"

Now she truly is insulted. That anyone could think she would associate with her father's murderer—

She spits the bad taste from her mouth.

"I'll take that as a no," Montgomery Scott says.

Taking a deep breath, Jaylah considers. Obviously Montgomery Scott does not know what is happening on Altamid. The smart thing—what she is tempted to do—is to leave him here to find out and fend for himself.

But he's from the world that built and flew her house. And he's an engineer, someone who knows the technology she is learning piecemeal from trial and error.

At the very least, he deserves to know the danger he is in.

"He is Krall. He and his—" She pauses, searching for a word to describe the mining drones that operate in unison to bring down any ships unlucky enough to stray into Altamid's space. When they fly surveillance overhead, their engines buzz like insects she has seen in some of the videos. _"Bees_ ," she says. "They search the stars for his death machine. That is the reason you are here, why we are all here."

She knows her explanation is too simple but it will have to do.

"Even those three scammers?"

"They have fallen from the sky, like me and you."

Saying it this way— _me and you_ —settles something inside. She and Montgomery Scott are both orphans. She won't leave him here alone.

"Come with me. Now," she says. But Montgomery Scott hangs back.

"Hang on a minute lassie. I'm having a difficult day here. I've got to find my crewmates."

That's a surprise. His crashed aircraft couldn't carry more than one individual. His crewmates must have flown similar craft to the surface. If so, they can't be far. Finding them should be easy enough, unless the drone ships have spotted them already.

"I will help you find your mates. And then you will help me."

A fair trade, but Montgomery Scott still doesn't move.

"With what? You want me to fix something?"

She makes the same childish pantomime of using a tool that he insulted her with earlier. "Yes. You help me, and I help you."

Her ears prick up at a distant whirring noise. A ship? Tilting her head to the side, she tries to locate it. She wishes Montgomery Scott would be silent, but he prattles on.

"Well, alright, things being as they are, I don't think I'll get a better offer today, so lead the way."

The whirring fades and disappears completely. Whatever caused it is no longer a danger. She straightens up.

"Good. I am Jaylah. And you are Montgomery Scott."

"Aye, Scotty."

She's starting to pick out the nuances of the language the more she hears him speak. It's rewarding to be able to communicate directly this way, and to edit her mistakes.

"Come, now, Montgomery Scotty."

To avoid giving away her house's location to any scavengers who might be following, Jaylah detours a kilometer south before backtracking through a rocky outcrop of scrub and tall grass. Their footsteps startle small winged insects into short hops and arcs ahead of them.

Then she turns north and starts the climb up through the tall trees and boulders to the cliff where her house perches, partially covered with dust and soil.

"Be careful here," she calls back to Montgomery Scotty. "The rocks are loose."

As if to prove her point, Montgomery Scotty trips forward and lands on his knee.

"Ow! Lassie, wait up! Give me a minute."

He's making so much noise—talking and scrambling through the bushes—that Jaylah turns around to scold him.

"The bees are always looking for the ones that get away," she says. "We have to hurry."

"I'm trying," he says, "but I've had a wee bit of excitement for one day. Can I sit for a minute and catch my breath?"

Ten meters to the left is a copse of trees tall and dense enough to offer cover. "This way," she says, motioning to him to follow. The loose soil makes walking a chore and she silently scolds herself to giving into his need to rest.

Too late now. She's committed to this course of action.

The trees are thickly grown together and she has to break one of the slender trunks so she and Montgomery Scotty can pass through. Once inside, she sits crosslegged on the ground and watches as he shambles in.

"Are we there yet?"

Something in his voice suggests he doesn't expect an answer. Jaylah closes her eyes, grateful for the deep shadows under the trees. Montgomery Scotty interrupts her reverie.

"What else can you tell me about this Krall?"

Opening her eyes, Jaylah looks closely at Montgomery Scotty's face. His expression is a mixture of worry and exhaustion. She knows her own expression must reflect something similar.

"I told you what I know," she says. Not dodging his question, exactly, but she's too tired—and too anxious to get to the safety of her house—to want to linger here talking. Still, she has to tell him more or he'll keep asking. "My family and I heard stories about ships that disappeared in this system, but we didn't believe them. We were on our way back from visiting relatives on our sister homeworld when we strayed too close to Altamid and the bees brought us down."

In the gloom Montgomery Scotty looks anguished. "I'm sorry, lassie," he says softly. "What happened to your family?"

Telling the entire story right now is more than she can bear. "My father died," she says, not untruthfully.

"And the rest?"

"Everyone else was…taken. Then they died."

It's more than she's ever told anyone—more than she's ever said aloud since she came to this place. The effort makes her shiver.

"I'm sorry," Montgomery Scotty says again, but underneath his voice she hears the telltale buzz of surveillance drones.

"Hsst!" Jaylah says, putting her finger to her lips in the motion she knows means _silence._ The mechanical whirring grows louder, louder, and then dopplers away. When she can no longer hear anything, she stands up and pushes back through the trees into the open space beyond.

"Hurry!"

"Are we there yet?" Montgomery Scotty calls up to her as they start over the last hill to her house. Humor? She isn't certain, though his repetition, humorous or not, is aggravating.

"Stop asking that. This is the way. Come."

As it always does when she enters her house, her heart stops its anxious thrumming and slows to normal. Safe, she thinks, as she steps out of the painful sunlight and into the cool shade of the interior.

"Watch your steps," she warns. "I do not want you setting off my traps."

She passes through a holographic projection of trees, the image shimmering slightly.

Behind her, Montgomery Scotty walks through.

"Huh, that's clever. What is this place?"

She's never shown it to anyone. For an instant she hesitates, wondering if she's doing the right thing to trust this man. "This is my house."

"Your house?" Montgomery Scotty walks further into the enclosure. "Wait a minute. Is this a ship?"

Instead of answering, Jaylah leads the way to the large command center. On one side are two work consoles that she thinks are probably communications and science monitors. On the other side of the room are the navigation and helm stations. Tools and broken equipment lie scattered around.

"I hope you find your friends," she says, glancing at the work still to be done, "and you help me fix it so I can leave this planet forever."

Montgomery Scotty crosses the distance between them and stands at her side.

"Wait a minute. Is this _your_ ship?"

And here it is at last, the moment she has dreaded ever since she decided to share the secret of her house with him. _Her_ house— _her_ refuge—the place she has called hers for almost as long as she has been on this wretched planet. Her only hope of escape—every waking second devoted to restoring it and caring for it. _Her_ house. _Hers._

Until now. Calling it her house when she stands beside its true owner feels like a _story_ , as fictional as the videos she comforts herself with.

Her people are not storytellers. She takes a breath, lets it out slowly, and aims her handheld light at the nameplate on the wall.

"No, Montgomery Scotty. It's yours."

 **A/N: So, this chapter violates my own rules about limiting how much of the actual movie scenes I include with the "missing scenes." I apologize for that and hope you are not disappointed. My hope is that Jaylah's backstory and her internal musings during the movie scenes made it fun to read anyway.**

 **Thanks for reading and commenting! I appreciate it very much!**


	10. Meet Ups

**Chapter 10: Meet Ups**

 **Disclaimer: I own nothing in the Star Trek universe and make no money from writing about characters I have loved for a very long time.**

"I am Lieutenant Nyota Uhura of the starship _Enterprise_ , and you have committed an act of war against the Federation."

A verbal gauntlet thrown in anger at her captor, her words deliberately clipped and aggressive. A risk to speak this way, but Nyota's beyond caring. To her surprise—and if she is honest, to her relief—her captor jerks visibly backward as if struck.

"Federation!" he spits. "Federation is an act of war!"

Before she can stop herself, she says, "You attacked us!"

She tenses, waiting to dodge a blow. Instead, her captor tilts his head and runs an intense gaze over her. Then his eyes meet hers and something in his expression changes.

"Your captain. Why did you sacrifice yourself for him?"

A hint of admiration in his tone? Nyota prides herself on her aural acuity, but he's hard to read, his voice graveled and smoky, as if he hasn't spoken English in years.

Jutting her chin up, she says, "He would have done the same, and if he made it off that ship, he will come for us!"

Bravado, but born from her belief in Jim Kirk. _He will come_. She knows it as well as she knows anything about him.

Apparently her captor knows it, too. "I am counting on it."

He turns his back on her then and the other alien, shorter and leaner than his leader, waves a phaser rifle at her. A dismissal? Deciding to accept it as such, she heads down the walkway toward an open compound, halfway expecting to feel the searing pain of a phaser blast in her back.

In the compound, crew members are milling about or shambling in ragged lines, looking like historical videos of war-torn refugees or people in shock after a tragedy.

 _Which is what we are_ , she thinks.

Standing with phaser rifles pointed at the crew are the oddly faceless soldiers who attacked the ship. Seeing her, one waves his weapon at her, an indication to join a line. She falls into place behind a young ensign nursing her arm.

"Are you okay?" she says, leaning forward.

The ensign looks up at her with a blank expression. "Where are we?"

Placing her hand on the ensign's shoulder, Nyota helps steady her as they continue into a fenced enclosure. Immediately she starts noting the people she knows. Hannity, Darwin, Anaga Nwoke. Keenser standing beside an engineer whose name she's forgotten, but no Scotty. And Dr. McCoy isn't anywhere in sight.

Her heart is racing and her mouth is dry as she scans the crowd.

She knows the captain isn't here. But there's Sulu, and two more junior officers who are usually part of the bridge crew, covered with dirt and soot.

A flash of dark hair and a blue uniform shirt behind a gathering knot of red-shirted security officers—she rushes forward only to see the dark hair and blue shirt resolve into an entomologist named O'Halloran.

Pivoting slowly in place, she cranes her neck looking for Spock.

"I haven't seen him." Sulu at her shoulder, a look of crucifixion in his eyes.

Nyota nods. He's not here. If he were, she would know.

 _If he's alive—_

Closing her eyes, she tries to hear past the roaring of her heartbeat in her ears.

Nothing at first, and then she feels it, the slender thread that always connects them—a wisp of awareness that never really goes away. Even when they are most at odds, even as she walked away from him on the _Yorktown_ , determined not to look back, she could feel the ghost or shadow or trace or whatever it is that being in Spock's mind and having him in hers has left her with.

She'd felt it first long before they ever admitted to themselves—much less to each other—that they were drawn to each other, Starfleet Academy professor and student aide, tripped up by a mysterious pull, an electric charge that fairly leaped from his fingertip to her palm when they touched. An unlooked for attachment, and then a sought after one.

Still there, tenuous and faint.

"He's alive," she says. Sulu's look is frankly skeptical, but he is too gracious to say anything.

She reaches for his hand and presses it. "What about you? Are you okay?"

"I should never have brought them out here," Sulu says, hardly making eye contact with her. "I was just thinking about what would be easier for me. I wasn't thinking about how we're so far from everything—"

"Ben knew what he was getting into. He wanted to be out here, too. And besides, the _Yorktown_ is on the other side of the nebula. They're safe."

Sulu doesn't answer but Nyota sees him nod slightly, a concession of sorts. He has no reason to beat himself up about trying to balance his career and his family. That she and Spock weren't able to do the same thing—

A lump in her throat, and she tries to reach out again to feel his presence in her mind. This time she feels nothing. _If he's alive_ —

A luxury to wallow in pity right now. She's better trained than that.

"Let's get a count of everyone here," she tells Sulu. "And then let's figure out how we're going to get out."

A rustle at her side—Ensign Syl, her hands visibly shaking, her eyes darting around at the guards on the perimeter of the compound.

"I need to talk to you," she says, looking from Nyota to Sulu. "There's something you need to know. The captain gave me the artifact the aliens were looking for on the ship."

Stunned, Nyota said, "You still have it?"

"Yes, but it's hidden. I'm not sure, but I think it's a weapon of some sort."

She's clearly asking for direction. Nyota exchanges a look with Sulu and then makes a decision. "Captain Kirk will get it from you when he's ready," she says with more confidence than she feels. "He'll be here soon."

* * *

The last time Pavel sees the _Enterprise_ , the saucer is a fiery half moon, the alien Kalara a dark silhouette in the foreground. As the saucer flips forward, something in Kalara's stance suggests resignation. No movement, her hands at her side, passively waiting for the tidal wave.

By contrast, he and the captain make a hasty retreat, flying first through the air and landing hard on scrub and tall grass.

"Move!" the captain yells. Hoping he hasn't broken anything, Pavel scrambles to his feet and runs.

He trips twice as small explosions from the dying ship continue to reverberate through the air.

"You still with me?" Captain Kirk calls.

They run until they reach a clearing where the trees have thinned out. While they pause to catch their breath, he pulls out his scanner and marks their coordinates. Running in the heavy survival jumpsuits the escape pods were equipped with has made him hot and sweaty and he considers stripping down to his uniform, but the jumpsuits are outfitted with sensors to help rescue ships pick up their bio-signs.

"Anything?" the captain asks when he stops again to check for signals. Pavel looks up and frowns. "They have to be here somewhere," the captain says. "Why bother to intercept the escape pods unless they were going to take them somewhere."

It's not a question as much as a declaration, as if saying it out loud makes it true. _The crew is alive_. Now he and the captain have to find them.

The sky is growing brighter and even without using the scanner he sees that the terrain is increasingly rocky ahead. Two kilometers in the distance is a flat-topped escarpment. A good place for a lookout?

As if he can read his navigator's mind, Captain Kirk says, "Let's head up into those mountains and see what we can see."

"Captain, we should have been able to pick up a signal by now. What if—"

"If Spock were here, he'd point out those magnetic outcrops that make communications tricky. And see all these hills and mountains? Hard to bounce a signal through. It's too early to say—"

The captain stops short of voicing anything dire. _Not_ saying it means it _isn't_ true. Yet.

"Aye, Captain." Pavel's tone is low and mournful. The captain seems determined to buoy his mood.

"We'll find the crew. They're the most resourceful people I know. Don't give up, okay?"

Pavel nods silently, not willing to be humored. As they stumble their way through fields of boulders and thick vegetation, he pauses regularly to adjust his scanner.

Several weeks ago Commander Spock showed him a way to use a handheld scanner to distinguish the pulse amplitude of Starfleet communicators from background radiation noise. They had both been off duty, a 3D chessboard set up in the forward lounge, the two of them discussing the new scanner designs and playing a leisurely game, something they did several times a month. Glancing up from moving his knight to level three—and hearing Spock's dry pronouncement that the move was ill-advised—Pavel noticed a couple of ensigns from the astrophysics lab eyeing him with sympathy, as if he were a prisoner forced to do hard labor.

He knew that some of the crew were intimidated by Spock. It was an attitude that irritated him, even as he understood why they felt that way.

"Sure, he's brilliant," Ensign Deela El-Fajorrah, the pretty Orion he'd dated until recently said, "but I wouldn't want to _socialize_ with him. He dressed me down last week for being two minutes late for my shift. Two minutes! And he didn't even ask me why!"

"Because it didn't matter," Pavel said. "You were late. You shouldn't have been."

Deela gave him an icy stare—which, in retrospect, was a hint that things were going to go badly from there. At the time, however, he'd felt compelled to defend the Commander.

Spock might appear austere but that doesn't mean he isn't fair. Or caring.

And Spock is the reason Pavel is in Starfleet. If Spock hadn't sought him out when he was a 16 year-old student at the Federation Worlds Chess Competition in London, Pavel would be stuck in some boring tech job in his hometown, Novgorod, disappointed that his application to Starfleet Academy had been rejected.

"You can sit the exam again next week," Spock told him on the second day of the chess conference where Pavel advanced to the semi-finals. The auditorium filled with competitors and onlookers was crowded and noisy and Pavel's command of Standard English was shaky. Had he heard him correctly?

Not only did Spock offer him a chance to reapply, he arranged for him to be tutored in the language lab that he and Lieutenant Uhura ran at the Academy. Without their help, he wouldn't be here now.

Which at the moment isn't a happy thought.

The sun is directly overhead before he finally picks up a signal.

"Captain!" He holds up his scanner. A definite electronic trace, though too faint to identify the source.

"How far away are we from the coordinates of that call?"

"Still a ways." The signal, weak as it is, is the first hopeful sign he's had since the attack. He decides to ask a question that he's mulled over since he saw the captain aim a phaser at Kalara's head. "Captain, when did you begin to suspect her?"

The captain isn't confused by the apparent _non sequitur_. He grimaces. "Not soon enough."

"How did you know?"

A wobble as the captain steps on the sloping surface of a boulder. Pavel scrambles behind him.

"Oh, I guess you could say I've got a good nose for danger."

A cloud of acrid black smoke billows up around him.

"Run!" Captain Kirk shouts, but even as Pavel does, he feels the snap and pull of a net slinging him backward onto the rock face. He's pulled so tightly that he can't move his arms or legs.

"Captain!" he calls. From the sound of it, the captain, too, is imprisoned in the trap.

At that moment he hears voices and the unmistakable sound of footfalls on the loose scree. The aliens who destroyed the _Enterprise_ , hunting down survivors! He's instantly both furious and glad. They know where the rest of the crew are. If they don't kill him first, they will take him there.

"Get ready!" Captain Kirk says as the footfalls grow louder. "They aren't taking us without a fight!"

"Captain?"

Twisting his head so that he can look forward, Pavel sees a slender alien woman, so pale that her skin is luminous, the black striations on her face a striking contrast.

"You know these men?" she says to someone behind her.

"Aye, lassie," says a familiar voice. "That wee man there is Pavel Chekov. And that handsome beast is James T. Kirk. They're my mates. It's good to see you, sir."

The pale woman aims a long-barrel particle weapon at them.

The captain sounds alarmed. "What's she doing? Scotty?"

A noise like a blaster and they fall hard to the ground.

"You're free, James T."

Dusting himself off, the captain turns to Scotty. "Who's your new friend here? She sure knows how to throw out a welcome mat."

Scotty catches Pavel up in an exuberant hug before he answers. "This is Jaylah," he says, sounding almost like a proud parent.

"Did you find anyone else?"

Scotty's happy mood dissipates at once.

"No, sir," he says. "You're the only ones."

That's as much a surprise as it is a disappointment. Pavel feels a lump in the back of his throat.

"We must go," Jaylah says. Worry in her voice? Or irritation? Scotty turns and sounds just as alarmed.

"They'll be looking for us," he says. "We have to get inside."

"Inside? Inside where?"

Jaylah starts up the path the way she came. Calling back over her shoulder, she says, "My house. We will be safe there."

Captain Kirk raises his eyebrows and Scotty nods. "Aye, Captain. You have to see this for yourself."

 **Author's Notes: The little backstory about Chekov at the Federation Worlds Chess Championship is in my story "Crossing the Equator."**

 **Thanks so much for staying onboard with this story! I appreciate all the feedback, including ilex-ferox's pointing out the bad science in the last chapter! Rogue planets like the one I describe for Jaylah's homeworld do exist—you know, those interstellar planets that don't orbit a star—but I completely muffed the description of the planet's moons. Moons orbiting a starless planet would appear dark without any reflected light (like a new moon in our sky), not bright like I described them. Either help me think of a way to retcon explain my goof, or let's just keep this mistake between friends….**


	11. Blood Brothers

**Chapter 11: Blood Brothers**

 **Disclaimer: I make no money here. Enjoy the fun for free!**

Leonard McCoy prides himself on being fairly unflappable. That's the word—unflappable—as in not easily ruffled, cool under fire. His well-known anxiety _shtick_ is just that, mostly pretend drama about his distrust of technology, like his silliness about his innards being twisted in the transporter. Where it matters—in his work as a physician—he is steady-handed and sure, grateful for the tools and machinery that give him a winning edge against trauma or disease.

Cutting away Spock's torn, blood-soaked uniform shirt with rusty old-fashioned scissors, McCoy doesn't feel unflappable at all. In fact, with Jim hovering at his elbow, he feels almost jittery.

"Do you mind?" he says, not bothering to hide his irritation. Jim stands up but doesn't leave. "I'll let you know when I know something."

"Bones, I—"

"You're bothering me, okay? You're breathing too loud for me to concentrate, and I really need to concentrate right now. No one's used this equipment in, oh, a hundred years or so. It's like trying to operate using a knitting needle. So go away. I promise I'll let you know something soon."

He's crouched uncomfortably over Spock who lies on a cushioned bench in the _USS Franklin's_ mess hall. It's damned awkward, but he doesn't dare try to move him to sickbay while he's bleeding this heavily. Besides, _Franklin's_ sickbay is useless. Worse than useless, since Jaylah gathered up all of the equipment still working and handed it to him already.

Even the working pieces are working poorly. The dermal regenerator is barely faster than someone's own body. The tricorder looks like an exhibit in a history book.

Spock's blue uniform shirt peeled away, McCoy starts cutting away the black undershirt. Spock moans loudly, as unsettling a sound as he can remember.

He's not one of those people—and there are, admittedly, still too many of them—who believe that Vulcans are virtual automatons without emotions. He's seen Spock exhibit almost every emotion possible, including rage and devotion, even tenderness. And now add to that, tearful grief and overt amusement.

Of course, Spock will probably later deny it, but McCoy knows what he saw.

* * *

How long ago had he crashlanded a swarm ship on Altamid, done emergency surgery on Spock, hobbled over rocks and around boulders looking for shelter? It seems a lifetime ago that the Fabonian cave with painted markings on the ceiling had drawn Spock's attention and pulled them out of the sun and away from the surveillance ships that buzzed through the area.

Or at least, the cave and its markings had drawn his attention until he collapsed on the ground, his eyes rolling back, his skin clammy to McCoy's touch. Pressing his fingers to Spock's neck, McCoy had noted the thready pulse, far slower than it should have been. Worse, on his back Spock seemed to struggle to breathe. McCoy stood behind his head, looped his arms through Spock's, and pulled him the side of the cave, scooting him upright against it.

His breathing improved at once, becoming less labored. But the motion opened the abdominal wound and restarted the bleeding.

"Don't die on me, Spock," McCoy muttered, ripping a strip of cloth from the hem of his own shirt and wadding it up to stanch the blood. As long as he kept his hand pressed against the improvised bandage, the flow of blood was more like a trickle, but as soon as he took his hand away, the bleeding started again in earnest.

His only option was to sit beside Spock and hold the bandage in place against his wound.

For at least a dozen times that day McCoy wished that he knew more than the bare basics about Vulcan physiology. He had a working knowledge of where the major organs were and how they functioned, but things he needed to know—like how long it took for copper-based blood to clot—were beyond him.

"If we make it back," he told the unconscious Vulcan beside him, "I'm going to become a damn expert."

At some level he knew he was being too hard on himself. After all, being without access to a computer was a rare thing. And it was impossible to memorize everything about all of the 27 alien species serving aboard the _Enterprise._

As it was, Spock was skating perilously close to death. Sitting beside him, his fingers growing cramped, McCoy watched the rise and fall of Spock's chest and willed him to breathe.

The shadows inside the Fabonian cave slid across the floor as the day inched forward. The heat, his exhaustion—McCoy's eyes fluttered shut and his head bobbed forward. With a jerk, he sat upright.

Spock's skin looked waxy in the waning light; his eyes were closed. McCoy leaned close and listened, but his breathing was too shallow to hear.

"Spock, Spock! Wake up, dammit!"

For a wild moment he was certain he was dead and he had a sinking foretaste of what it would be like to tell Jim, to tell Uhura, that he'd been with him but hadn't been able to save him. Placing his hands on Spock's face—thumbs under his eyes, index fingers over the Vulcan neural nodes under his jaw—he pressed lightly and then again, this time harder.

Spock's dark lashes parted and he lifted his hands to push McCoy away.

"I am entirely conscious, doctor." A lie, but McCoy was so relieved that he didn't challenge him. "I am simply contemplating the nature of mortality."

Spock's erratic breathing gave a tentative quality to his voice. Damned defensive Vulcans, never admitting weakness. When it wasn't annoying, it was endearing.

"Feeling philosophical, huh? Massive blood loss with do that to you."

Spock ignored McCoy's tease. When he spoke again, his voice sounded as if he were in the bottom of a well, trapped and mournful and vulnerable. And for the first time that McCoy could recall, _raw_ , the way old friends shared with each other, or like brothers when no one else was around to hear them.

"You asked me why Lieutenant Uhura and I parted ways. I became concerned, in light of Vulcan's demise, that I owed a debt of duty to my species."

An awkward way of putting it—a reminder that Spock's first language was not standard English but a language naturally steeped in formality and logic.

 _I am a member of an endangered species_ , Spock said shortly after the destruction of Vulcan—and what was true then, if possible, was truer now that the colony was struggling to establish itself. Suddenly McCoy knew why Spock had asked him to gather research on the mysterious uptick in deaths among Vulcan survivors. He remembered the last time he had seen Spock and Uhura together, an overheard conversation between them on _Yorktown_ obviously fraught.

"You thought you should be off making little Vulcans, huh?" McCoy said, nodding. "Yeah, I can see how that would upset her."

"I intended to discuss it with her further but I received some news which affected me unexpectedly."

"What news?"

The intimacy in Spock's tone dampened Bones' almost kneejerk tendency to joke. From where he sat in the cave, McCoy saw Spock silhouetted against the dusky Altamid sun. Streaks of yellow and orange, a stripe of purple cutting through the clouds, cast Spock's profile in shadow.

"Ambassador Spock has died."

McCoy was so surprised that for a moment he couldn't find words. By Vulcan standards, the ambassador was barely middle aged. Was he like other survivors of the Vulcan genocide, tied so closely to their world and to each other that living without them had proved impossible? McCoy's heart began to race.

"Oh," he stuttered, conscious of a growing fear. "Oh, I'm so sorry. I can't imagine what that must—" He chose his next words carefully, knowing Spock's pride in maintaining control. "— _feel_ like."

"When you've lived as many lives as he," Spock said, his voice choked with grief, his eyes brimming, "fear of death is illogical."

And there it was spelled out clearly, McCoy's biggest fear since Vulcan crumbled into dust—Spock's rationale for his seeming headlong rush into annihilation.

His willingness to die when he piloted the Vulcan scout ship into the maw of Nero's _Narada_ ; his descent into the Niburan volcano; his insistence that the Prime Directive was more important than his life. Would he take the ambassador's death as an omen of his own impending one? Or worse, as justification for it? Were they, in some mystery McCoy didn't understand, tied together in a quantum way that meant Spock had to die now that his counterpart was gone? The thought flushed his face and put force behind his words.

"Fear of death is what keeps us alive."

"I want to live as he did," Spock said, ignoring the worry and caution in McCoy's voice. "That is why I decided to redirect my efforts and continue his work….on New Vulcan."

McCoy was flabbergasted. Of all the things Spock could have said, resigning his commission was never on the radar.

"You're leaving Starfleet?" He didn't try to hide his astonishment—nor his disapproval. "What did Jim have to say about that?"

Several expressions flickered across Spock's face in rapid succession. Regret? Sorrow? Guilt? Emotionless Vulcans, indeed. When he spoke at last, it was a lie dressed up as an admission.

"I could not find the time to tell him."

"I can tell you he's not going to like that. Hell, I don't know what he'd do without you." It was true, but until he heard himself say it out loud, McCoy hadn't fully believed it. Jim Kirk needed Spock. Needed his aggravating bureaucratic devotion to rules to keep Jim on the rails. Needed him as a sounding board, a data source, a surrogate. Needed him to offer a counterpoint to Jim's rush to judgment, his drive to action, his sometimes maddening optimism.

Unable to help himself, McCoy broke the somber mood. "Now, you know _me_ , on the other hand, I'd throw a party."

An affectionate jibe, one of a thousand he'd hurled at Spock since he'd known him, expecting—no, _wanting_ —Spock to hurl one back, giving as well as he took.

This time, however, Spock said nothing. He tipped his head back against the rock wall and McCoy heard an unfamiliar low rumble coming from his chest. Spock's lips parted and he smiled, barely at first and then broadly, his laughter bubbling up.

McCoy's instinct was to laugh with him. Until that moment he wasn't sure Vulcans _could_ laugh—or smile, for that matter. Not the little lip turn-up and crinkled-eye smile he'd seen Spock give Uhura more than once when they thought they were unobserved—but an authentic, unmistakable laugh.

McCoy laughed, too.

And then the meaning hit him and his smile turned into a worried frown.

"My god, you're getting delirious!"

They had to get moving. If he didn't find help soon, the Vulcan commander was a goner for sure.

"McCoy to _Enterprise_ ," he said, flipping open his communicator.

"Doctor, the _Enterprise_ was under heavy assault when we were ejected. They may not be able to reply."

That was better, the annoying Vulcan pragmatist who drove him crazy. McCoy was almost relieved.

"We have to try!" he scolded.

"Then perhaps you should move away from the dituranium in this cave wall. It dampens communicator signals."

McCoy gave a big harrumph. "I don't see a tricorder in your hand. There's no way you can know what this wall is made of."

Spock's eyes fluttered alarmingly, and he sighed. "Under these lighting conditions, the color of this igneous rock suggests—"

"Forget it! We have to get out of here. Come on!"

He bent over to help Spock to his feet. On one hand, getting Spock moving again was a good thing, improving their chances for contacting the ship.

But on the other hand, he could see that Spock's shirt was saturated with blood. He was bleeding profusely.

They didn't go far, McCoy finding a rock shelf for Spock to recline against while he called with his communicator.

"McCoy to _Enterprise_. _Enterprise,_ please respond."

Reluctantly, he flipped the communicator closed and helped Spock to his feet.

As grueling as stumbling across the rock field was for McCoy, he knew that Spock was having a much harder time. When the drone ships found them at last, he almost cheered.

* * *

And then he feels the telltale jitter in his stomach and his feet find purchase on a transporter pad.

An unfamiliar room—a ship?—and Scotty here, mumbling something about splicing people with the transporter.

Jim, too, a great relief to see him unharmed standing beside Spock who looks, in the dim lighting, about to faint.

In the periphery of his vision he notes Chekov and a young girl—an alien he's never seen before.

Then the rush to settle Spock in the mess hall, a jumble of ancient tools to sort through, and finally McCoy has time to look closely at Spock's wound.

He hadn't been exaggerating when he said that another inch to the left and Spock would be dead. Where he'd cauterized the edges of the wound earlier with a piece of the metal latch from the swarm ship door, the tissue seeps blood slowly. More concerning is the blood gushing up from deeper in the wound.

What he'd give to have his portable scanner or even a decent medical tricorder.

On the bench, Spock starts to tremble.

"Hang in there," McCoy says, though he isn't certain Spock can even hear him. His eyes are open but unfocused, his brow sweaty.

Picking up an auto-suturer, McCoy taps it experimentally against his own wrist. A buzz and a snap, and McCoy holds his wrist up to examine a tiny clear filament protruding from his skin. Good. At least this works.

Inserting the auto-suturer deeply enough into the wound to stop the bleeding is trickier. Spock moans again and takes deep, gulping breaths. From the corner of his eye McCoy sees Jim hovering at the door of the mess hall.

He'll have to work fast. "So," he says, stitching what he hopes is the deepest part of the wound, "you never did tell me what your favorite color is."

Spock presses his eyes tightly together as McCoy suctions out some of the seeping blood. "Maybe that's too easy a question," McCoy says through gritted teeth, "so how about this one. You were quoting Shakespeare a little while ago. What's your favorite play?"

He's speaking mostly to keep himself from panicking. Closing the wound is proving harder than he imagined, thick green blood gumming up the auto-suturer every minute or so, requiring him to stop and clear it. Hopefully Spock is beyond feeling most of it.

To his surprise, Spock's eyes open suddenly.

"Vulcans do not have favorites."

Despite his very real fear, despite being so tired that his eyes are gritty with exhaustion, McCoy laughs.

"Bullshit. Somebody else might believe that, Spock, but I know you too well."

He pauses the auto-suturer and presses lightly on Spock's abdomen. No new blood seeps up. _Finally._ Turning the auto-suturer back on, he starts closing the wound.

"Vulcans do not lie."

"Two lies in a row," McCoy says, his mood lifting considerably. Spock is stabilizing if he's able to be this deliberately annoying.

The wound finally sealed to his satisfaction, McCoy helps Spock into the _Franklin_ jumpsuit Jaylah pulls out of a storage bin.

"I put in a lot of hard work," McCoy scolds as he directs Spock to sit, "so go easy for now or you'll pull out those sutures. I don't want to have to do all that over again."

Wincing, Spock eases onto a chair. "I will take that under advisement."

"You'll do more than take it under advisement. You'll do exactly what I say."

Hearing Jim coming into the mess hall behind him, McCoy swivels around.

"And that goes double for you, Jim. I know you need him—" He glances back at Spock and they make eye contact. _See? I told you._ "—but you'll have to wait until he can get on his feet."

"How long?"

"Jim, I'm serious."

"And I'm serious, Bones. Chekov has the coordinates where Kalara signaled to Krall. That might be where the crew is being held."

Another noise, this time from Spock.

"Where do you think you're going?" McCoy says. "I told you—"

"Finding the crew is of utmost importance." Spock wobbles slightly on his feet and darts out a hand to steady himself.

Of course he's right. And Jim's right. But dammit, he's right, too.

 _The good of the many outweigh the needs of the one_ , Spock told him once. McCoy had taken umbrage at the calculating, cold-hearted pragmatism of such a view and he'd lambasted Spock for it. They'd dickered about it for awhile and then let it go, the way they let so many of their disagreements fade into the background of who they are.

"Bones, I need him."

The argument he can't argue against. He makes deliberate eye contact with Spock again.

 _Hear that? And you want to leave?_

Unspoken but understood, he's certain of it. Spock's expression darkens in response.

"Then I'm staying close to you," McCoy says, crossing him arms. "Whether you like it or not."

This time he sees Jim and Spock exchange glances. Let them. He can outstubborn either of them any day.

 **Author's note: The tender scene where Spock and Bones talk inside the Fabonian cave was easily my favorite part of** _ **Star Trek Beyond**_ **. I hope I've done justice to it.**

 **Thanks for all your support!**


	12. Keeping Track

**Chapter 12: Keeping Track**

 **Disclaimer: I do not own these characters or make money here.**

The purchase wasn't completed, and already Sarek was feeling buyer's remorse.

"An excellent choice," the Denobulan merchant purred. He lifted the blue stone to the light and tipped it forward and back, making the silver striations on its surface flicker. "For your beloved, no doubt? Or a wedding gift? No? At any rate, our metalsmith has many settings to choose from. A ring, perhaps?"

Sarek stifled his irritation. His own fault for doing what he never did, giving into impulse. He'd passed the small gem shop on Kober Street many times when he walked from the Vulcan Embassy to Starfleet Headquarters near the Presidio. Until today, he'd never even considered going inside.

"I do not wish to have it set at this time," Sarek said.

The Denobulan merchant's face fell and he sniffed loudly. "It hardly seems worth buying," he said. Then apparently sensing Sarek's blooming regret, he backpedaled quickly. "Of course, if you change your mind, you can have it set later. It would make a nice bracelet or an amulet."

"The stone is sufficient."

That a gem merchant in San Francisco had a _vokau-heya_ , or remembrance stone, for sale was remarkable. Not that the gems were especially rare, but they were weighted with such symbolism and so popular in ceremonial jewelry that Vulcan jewelers had trouble keeping them in stock.

They were called _remembrance stones_ because they had been created during Vulcan's brush with nuclear war in the distant past—mineral artifacts forged in the heat of bomb blasts. Still slightly radioactive, but after all this time, harmless.

Spotting one in the window, Sarek had gone in to inquire about it….and walked out 3.4 minutes later its owner.

As he walked back to the Vulcan Embassy, he kept his hand in his pocket, his fingers cradling the stone in its soft velveteen bag.

"You're late." The young woman sharing his office grinned as she spoke. Sarek had no set schedule and was not, therefore, late. Humans, however, sometimes made untrue statements in unusual contexts as a way of expressing humor. Was this a joke, perhaps?

The young woman—Amanda Grayson—had worked at the Vulcan Embassy as a cultural attaché for 52 days, during which time she had made repeated jokes. Or so Sarek assumed. Often he wasn't sure how to interpret the intent behind her words. Friendliness was part of it, he was fairly certain. They'd shared tea breaks and light mid-day meals, and once she invited him to a musical concert. Very instructive in teaching him the finer points of human interactions, which was, of course, her purpose in being hired.

So far he was her most frequent pupil, although she had been hired to help anyone who requested her assistance with navigating the pitfalls of human interactions. Even the other junior adjutant who worked closely with Sarek was skeptical about the benefits of social engagements with humans.

"My work leaves me little free time," Sokal said, begging off Sarek's invitation for the two of them to accompany Amanda to what she called a _cocktail party_ at the opening of the annual Federation Assembly. "Please excuse me."

"There is much to learn by socializing," Sarek countered, but Sokal shook his head, barely disguising his distaste.

To his surprise, Sarek found that such events were not at all distasteful. They were, if he were honest with himself, quite pleasurable.

Or least, spending time conversing with Amanda in such situations was pleasing to him.

He pressed his fingers to the stone and crossed the office to his desk.

"Were you expecting me?" he asked. He stood facing her, noting how the light from the window put interesting highlights in her dark, shoulder-length hair. Her eyes, equally dark, were opened wider than usual, her brows arched high.

Amusement, then. And she was preparing to pitch another joke his way. He recognized the look by now.

"I could program my clock by you. You are always back to work at 3." She laughed with an ease that made Sarek feel oddly unsettled. "I wanted to ask you to a late lunch, but I'll just go to the commissary and get some tea."

She stood up and headed out the door. Watching her go, for the second time that day Sarek gave into impulse. "I could join you," he said. Amanda paused and pirouetted to face him.

 _A dancer, or a gymnast. She must have been one once, her steps were that graceful._ Sarek caught himself staring.

"You aren't too busy?" she asked.

"I have a great deal of work to do." The truth, but he saw by the alteration in her expression that it was not the appropriate thing to say. "However, I would prefer to eat with you."

The commissary was empty as they helped themselves to tea and fruit from the tea cart. Amanda led the way to a table beside a window overlooking a Japanese garden.

"This is my favorite spot," she said. "I don't feel so penned up when I can see living things."

"My father says something similar. He spends the majority of his time working in his garden." Sarek blinked in surprise at hearing himself blurt out such personal details without forethought. He never shared such information with anyone. To do so unbidden to another Vulcan was inexcusable. To do so with Amanda, however, felt…natural.

Three times today he'd been impulsive. Tonight he would increase his meditation time.

Amanda, however, didn't seem to notice his untoward behavior. Instead, she sipped her tea and then asked, "Do you miss it?"

"I beg your pardon."

"Your garden. Your home. Vulcan."

"Ms. Grayson, Vulcans do not _miss_ things. To do so would be illogical. I am here on Earth. Whatever… _nostalgia_ ….I might have for Vulcan, expressing it will not alter the fact that I am not there."

He half expected Amanda to argue with him—even joke with him—as she had in the past when he'd talked about Vulcan philosophy. Instead, she lifted her cup to her lips and watched him over the rim as she cooled her tea by blowing gently on it.

To his horror, his face flushed and he shivered. When Amanda set her cup back on its saucer, he was relieved and disappointed in equal measure.

"That must be nice," she said, turning to look out the window. "Not to miss your home when you're so far away."

Something in her words was jarring, as if they were freighted by a subtext he didn't understand. Was she commenting about her own situation? He recalled that her work application listed Seattle as her home, though he had the impression that she had lived in San Francisco for some time.

Or was she disappointed that he didn't share her longing for home? Was she making a statement about the cultural divide between the two of them—different human and Vulcan attitudes keeping them apart?

He pressed his hand to his side and felt his heart racing.

"I may have been unclear," he said. Amanda turned her gaze back to him. He pulled the small velveteen bag from his pocket and placed it on the table between them.

"What's that?"

"It may be," Sarek said, "that I do miss my home after all. Open it."

Watching her fingers untangle the strings of the bag made his face flush again.

"It's beautiful," she said, upending the bag and letting the stone fall into her palm. "What is it?"

"In Vulcan it is called _vokau-heya_."

" _Vokaya_ ," she said, sounding out the syllables slowly. "Memory stone?"

"Close enough."

"To help you remember your world."

"To remember a time when we almost destroyed it."

"It's warm!" She squeezed the stone and then opened her palm. "What are you going to do with it?"

"The jeweler asked me the same thing," Sarek said. "He indicated multiple possibilities. Do you have a suggestion?"

"It depends on who it's for." She held her palm close to her eyes. "If it's for you, a ring would be nice. The stone's large enough."

Sarek watched her replace the _vokau-heya_ in the bag. With a start, he realized she expected a verbal response. "And if it is not for me?"

"Oh! Not for you! For someone else? Someone in your family?"

Sarek had a momentary image of his mother and father. Neither wore much jewelry.

"No," he said. "Not for my family."

Amanda blinked twice. "Oh! For someone special, though?"

Sarek was flustered. What had been an academic discussion—the dispensation of the stone—was suddenly a conversation with hidden pitfalls and odd corners. He wasn't sure what was being said. "Perhaps," he finally managed to say.

"Well," Amanda said slowly, "you could cut the stone for a necklace, I think. Put it in a silver or platinum setting, with a chain. Anyone would like that."

Her tone of voice was off, as if she were surprised or distressed by something. Abruptly she stood up.

"Thank you for the tea. It's later than I thought. I need to head on home now or I'll have to wait for a hoverbus. Bye!"

A whirl and a dash and he was left standing astonished in the commissary, not sure what had just happened.

That night as he lit his _asenoi_ and settled himself cross-legged on the floor beside it, a bolt of shock and wonder shook him.

 _She cared for him._ Somehow he knew this was true. Her strange behavior when she thought he might have someone special—someone not his family—in his life…she was saddened by that knowledge.

He repeated the words out loud: "She cares for me."

And the bigger surprise was that he felt the same.

37 days later when he adjusted the clasp of the necklace around her neck, she tipped her face up and kissed him.

Even now, sitting in his study on New Vulcan, when he closes his eyes and slows his breathing, he can still feel her lips on his.

* * *

If they would only be quiet for a few minutes, Spock could close his eyes and ease the pounding in his head.

He's sitting at the science station on the _Franklin_ , his hands propped uncharacteristically under his chin, listening as the captain, the doctor, and Mr. Scott argue about the course of action. He weighed in early in the debate, suggesting that they needed more data before mounting a rescue.

If he could think straight, if his head weren't pounding and his side didn't feel like it was on fire, he would know exactly what that data should be and how to get it.

But the pain is taking too much of his energy. If he could dampen the nausea and dull the worst of the burning in his side, he might be able to suggest a way to narrow the search parameters.

"Every minute we stand here arguing, he could be hurting the crew." The captain, his voice both pleading and cross. A surprise that he's letting his senior officers dictate the direction of the debate. Normally Captain Kirk solicits advice and then makes his choice—and everyone falls in line. Not now. Scotty pipes up.

"We should wait until we're absolutely sure."

"No, we have to get the crew back now," the captain says, sounding peeved. "Chekov has the coordinates that can lead us to Krall's base, so we go."

To Spock's surprise, Scotty doesn't back down. "With respect, sir, how do we know that Krall was at the base when she called him? Even if he was, we don't know that the crew was with him."

Even more surprising is McCoy's chiming in. "Or that they're still alive."

The captain is correct that the danger to the crew increases exponentially the longer they are with Krall. And Mr. Scott is also correct to be concerned that the crew might be held at a location different from where Kalara sent a signal. Mounting a rescue with insufficient data is risky.

If he weren't so tired—if he could think clearly—he would already have made the case that the captain's concern outweighs Mr. Scott's reservations. If he had pitched his vote to the captain's side, this debate would have been over long ago, the rescue already underway.

More proof that the captain needs him—that his fellow officers need him—to be a voice in the decision-making? Need his contribution to formulate an effective strategy?

If they only knew where the crew was being held.

And then it comes to him. With an obvious wobble, he stands up.

"Mr. Chekov, can you reconfigure the search parameters to in order to compensate for this formula?"

He senses everyone on the bridge swiveling to look at him. He crosses the distance to the long-range scanner.

"Aye, Commander," Chekov says. Spock leans past him and punches in the necessary information into the computer database. A periodic chart and a formulaic diagram show up on the screen. Chekov gives him a quizzical look. "What is this?"

"It is _vokau-heya_ , Mr. Chekov, a mineral unique to Vulcan which emits low level radiation."

Chekov turns to the task with the same enthusiasm he applies to every puzzle, from a difficult transporter configuration to a complex chess move. "I'll have to block out all other energy emissions," he says, his hands flying over the console.

Dr. McCoy puts words to what Spock assumes everyone is thinking. "Spock, what the hell would a Vulcan mineral be doing way out here?"

"Where you going with this?" the captain adds.

"Lt. Uhura wears a _vokau-heya_ amulet which I presented to her as a token of my affection and respect." He's not in the habit of revealing personal information so publicly, but the situation calls for it. McCoy lifts his eyebrows, something he does when he's getting to make a pronouncement.

"You gave your girlfriend radioactive jewelry?" His voice is a mixture of wonder and dismay. Spock rushes to reassure him.

"The emission is harmless, but its unique signature makes it very easy to identify."

The doctor doesn't appear reassured. Spock gets ready to explain the nuclear origins of _vokau-heya_ and the rate of atomic decay. Before he can, McCoy raises his eyebrows a second time.

"You gave your girlfriend a tracking device."

More a declaration than a question. Spock is taken off guard at once. Around him, he feels the eyes of everyone on him.

"That was not my intention."

McCoy shakes his head. "I'm glad he doesn't respect me," he says for the captain's benefit.

Behind him, the scanner bings. Mr. Chekov looks up. "Huh! I am detecting a trace amount of _vokaya_."

He feels certain that he knows the answer, but Spock asks the question anyway.

"Does the location match the coordinates you acquired from Kalara, Mr. Chekov?"

"It's a match, sir."

Turning to face the captain, Spock says, "Its presence suggests that Lt. Uhura, and thereby the rest of the crew, are being held at Krall's base of operations."

To his relief, the captain doesn't question his conclusion. Instead, he asks Chekov, "Can you beam them out?"

The young navigator's face falls. "No, sir. There is some geological interference that is blocking the transporter signal."

"I guess we're going to have to go break them out the old-fashioned way."

At once Spock knows what the captain intends. A physical rescue—making their way into the compound either by force or deception. The odds of success are low regardless, though deception seems to be the more logical choice.

The data they are missing is still worrying. They have no map of the compound or any way to surveille it before making their way forward. Indeed, just getting to the compound offers a challenge. If the terrain is similar to that surrounding the _Franklin_ , they will have to scale numerous formidable mountains. If time is of the essence, can they beam to the perimeter instead?

Like someone at a great distance, he halfway hears the conversation around him. The young alien, Jaylah, in distress _: You cannot go in this place. Everyone who goes there he kills._

The captain sounds incredulous— _You've been there? You've seen it?—_ and Mr. Scott's voice has a note of something akin to betrayal or incomprehension: _Why didn't you say something, lassie?_

More words, all emotional and fraught, but Spock is busy doing the calculations from the _Franklin_ to Krall's compound—factoring in the geologic disturbances Chekov mentioned and locating a landing sight far enough from the compound to escape detection.

Idly he notes Jaylah leaving the bridge, followed by Mr. Scott and the captain.

In his experience fighting the drones on the swarm ship, Spock had observed a curious redundancy in their actions, as if they were inter-linked. Striking one drone made both flinch backward, as if they shared a consciousness.

Or not a consciousness, but a neural net, the way old computer systems on Earth were once strung together as an electronic _Internet_.

That might be a useful insight in overcoming them. Rather than wasting ammunition on separate drones, they could target those close enough together to negatively impact the surrounding ones.

He starts after the captain but just then Jaylah, Mr. Scott, and the captain return to the bridge.

The captain eyes him carefully, like someone taking his measure. Concern about his stamina, no doubt. Fascinating, but once he realized that a rescue was a viable option, Spock has been able to manage his pain far more effectively.

"She's going to help," the captain says, glancing toward Jaylah, and Spock nods.

Whatever it takes to rescue Nyota—and the rest of the crew, of course.

 **Author's notes: Several people have noted that there is no novelization for** _ **Star Trek Beyond.**_ **In light of that omission, I've stopped worrying so much about including scenes that appear in the movie. This fic will continue to focus on "missing scenes," but since I'm not duplicating work you could find elsewhere, please enjoy!**

 **Also, I can't take credit for the explanation about** _ **vokau-heya**_ **, or vokaya. The guys over at Memory Alpha, Daniel Carlson, and Harry Doddema, were tapped to come up with a name by Simon Pegg. I love their explanation of its origins.**


	13. Manas

**Chapter 13: Manas**

 **Disclaimer: Free chapter to good readers!**

Manas hears the roar of the Hilts PX motorbike before he sees it. Loud, raspy, and full-throttled, the bike appears suddenly on a rise at the edge of the encampment.

"Kirk!" Krall says. Krall grabs the phase rifle from Manas' hands and he lets go willingly. He's never been as accurate of a shot as Krall—or Kalara, for that matter, something she reminded him of often enough.

Krall thrusts the Abronath toward him and begins targeting the moving motorbike. The first shot makes contact, exploding into a brilliant white light.

A hologram! Krall's face darkens in rage. Another shot—another hologram. The burring noise of the motorbike seems to surround them.

In the distance a group of _Enterprise_ prisoners are scurrying from the locked holding cell. Busy shooting at the motorbike, Krall is oblivious.

For a moment Manas considers calling his attention to the escape in progress.

The only time a prisoner ever managed to get out of the encampment, Krall held Manas responsible, not altogether without justification. He had been on watch, both Krall and Kalara busy harvesting the energy of some new captives. Two strikingly marked aliens—father and daughter—had taken advantage of a rare rainstorm to jimmy the cell restraints and make a break for freedom.

They hadn't gotten far. With the help of two drones, Manas captured and killed the older alien. The younger female, however, got away. When Krall found out, Manas wasn't sure that he wouldn't kill him out of frustration and anger.

"You've always been a disappointment!" Krall snarled. In the background, Kalara caught his eye and gave a pointed sneer.

He's never felt accepted by either, though he has never given them any reason to suspect his loyalty or call his service into question.

In many ways, being a member of the crew of the _Franklin_ , serving as the stellar cartographer for Captain Balthazar Edison, was the hardest work he ever did. The captain was a stern taskmaster, his years as a MACO giving him such a rough edge that more than one crewmember requested a transfer before they ever left Spacedock.

Kalara...Jessica Wolff...had known the captain as a fellow MACO before he was promoted and given the _Franklin_ , so it wasn't surprising that she lorded her familiarity over the other recruits.

But Manas had been personally recruited by Captain Edison, something he reminded Kalara of when she needed to be taken down a notch or two.

He'd grown up in the sprawling lowlands of Sumatra, one of the provinces in Indonesia. His city, Palembang, was, like most of Indonesia, an actual representation of the country's motto: _Bhinneka Tunggal Ika_. Unity in Diversity. Many Yet One. Racially and ethnically diverse, Palembang had been an interesting place to grow up.

He was Anderson Le in those days, the scrawny young son of secondary school teachers, his dad a PE coach, his mother a biologist. When Anderson started coming home from middle school with unexplained bruises, his father took him to the high school gym on the weekends and taught him taekwondo and judo. Within months he stopped coming home from school bloodied and bruised—but he also had no friends, the other children rightly afraid of him, his former bullies the most skittish of all.

After high school he won a scholarship to MIT to study astro-physics, and when he graduated, he snagged a prestigious job at West Point. Many of his students went on to join the MACOs, the Military Assault Command Operations, some even doing duty aboard Starfleet ships during the Xindi and Romulan wars.

When the Federation Charter was signed and the MACOs were phased out, West Point developed a course of study that fed directly into Starfleet, an option more and more of Le's students decided to try.

Still, the expansion of Starfleet under the aegis of the Federation meant that personnel were sometimes in short supply. More than one ship had a delayed launch while cadets were trained.

Balthazar Edison had lost two stellar-cartographers to other ships by the time he approached Anderson Le about signing up. He'd heard good things about Le as a professor—knew that he was trained in the martial arts—and thought that anyone who had traveled and lived as far from home as Le had was a wanderer at heart, someone who would feel at home in space. Flattered, Le joined up, going through an accelerated training program so that he was aboard when the _Franklin_ made its maiden voyage.

Unlike some of the crew who chafed under the captain's autocratic style, Le appreciated the discipline and order. His background at a military college made him sanguine about the necessity of hierarchies and chain of command. In Edison he saw a captain worthy of his respect.

For six months the _Franklin_ ran prototype drills, working out the bugs in the warp five engine matrix that would become standard on the regular ships of the line.

And then everything went wrong.

Le was on duty as stellar cartographer when an uncharted wormhole opened up and the _Franklin_ was propelled to the other side of a vast asteroid field and crash-landed on Altamid. At least he thought it was _probably_ Altamid. The charts of this part of space were incomplete, mere anecdotal sketches from travelers who had managed to navigate through the surrounding asteroid field.

He could tell that the crew blamed him. Stellar-cartographer giving no warning about a wormhole—not that anyone said anything directly, but he felt their glares. Both shuttlecrafts were lost right away trying to find the way back through the asteroids, the _Franklin_ too badly damaged to make an attempt.

At first the crew managed well enough, kipping on emergency rations and jerry-rigging the communications to broadcast a wide-beam mayday. The terrain was rugged and, apparently, uninhabited. When food ran short, small reconnaissance teams made longer and longer treks away from the ship, most never returning.

Of the 82 crewmembers who started the journey, five months after the crash on Altamid, only 12 remained. Most of those were too weak to scout or do repairs and spent their days in their bunks or in the practically useless sickbay. Then one day Le was picking his way down the boulder-strewn bank to the narrow, shallow river to refill their water filters when he heard a low-pitched whirring noise overhead. Looking up, he saw in the distance a speck in the sky. Too far to make out details, it was undoubtedly a search vehicle. Had Starfleet gotten their messages and come to rescue them at last? He hurried back up the mountain to tell the captain.

The captain chose Jessica Wolff and Le to accompany him in an effort to track down the vehicle. Leaving the last of the food and water with the remaining crew, they headed west, making their way slowly across a haystack of mountains.

For three days they traveled, living on a handful of dried protein bars and water scooped from the creek with their hands. At the end of the third day as they rested in the shade of tall pine-like trees, Le broached the idea of going back to the _Franklin_.

"Surely if anyone were here, we would have seen them by now," he said. "If it was a search vessel, they must have returned to their ship."

Jessica Wolff snorted in disgust. "You're the one who saw it. Did you imagine it?"

"It was there," he said so emphatically that he sounded defensive. "I mean, I did see it. I heard it, too."

"We press on," the captain said. Then he gave a hard look at Le and added, "If you are too tired to continue, return to the rest of the crew."

For a moment Le considered what to do. If he returned to the _Franklin_ , the crew might already be dead by now. If he continued forward, he would die soon enough out here in these mountains.

"The struggle makes us strong," the captain said. "If you don't believe that, I don't need you."

Le could feel Jessica Wolff eyeing him. "I'm with you, Captain," he said.

The next day—the last day—they stumbled across the hive.

It was an old compound, apparently built by the former inhabitants of the planet. In the center of the open area was a tower with small single and double occupant flitters parked like branches on a giant tree. Inside the abandoned buildings were an army of disconnected drones stowed like stacks of cordwood along the walls.

"A mining operation," the captain said, turning on one of the drones. It hummed to life, green indicator lights on its flank and helmet glowing bright. The drones looked easy enough to program—each one connected to the other through an electronic pulse system.

"See what you can do," the captain said, and Jessica Wolff turned her attention to the command board, wiping it off and adjusting the monitors as they came on.

"Come with me," the captain said, and Le followed him into the largest of the buildings. The stale air smelled like sulfur and ozone. Large looping coils hung from the ceiling and along the walls.

Pushing aside a tangle of ropes and wires, Le screamed. On the ground were the bodies of three members of the _Franklin_ crew, their faces oddly shrunken and distorted.

"What is it?" The captain's voice was right behind him. Before he could answer, Le heard the unmistakable click of a sidearm trigger.

"You're trespassing." Le turned slowly and saw Captain Edison, hands up, facing off against a squat four-eyed alien. He was pale, his skin almost luminescent, like the creatures on Earth who lived deep underground or at the bottom of the sea. The universal translator on Le's communicator buzzed again as the alien added, "What are you doing here?"

"These are my people," the captain said, motioning to the three dead crew. "What did you do to them?"

Stepping back, the alien seemed to be cringing. "I had no choice," he said. "I was surveying this planet and I lost contact with my ship. They left me here a long time ago."

"That was you in the survey vehicle! I saw you a few days ago."

"I keep returning to our rendezvous site," the alien said. "In the meantime, there's no sustenance on this planet. If it weren't for the energy transference technology, I would have died."

"You captured my crew!" The captain took a step toward the alien, who took a corresponding step back. "Show me what you did! Show me!"

"I had to! I had to! You would have done the same!"

"Show me!"

"Here! It's here! I don't know how it works exactly, but it takes energy signatures and transfers them."

The captain was a whirl of motion. "Like this?" he shouted, grabbing the alien by the neck. Le jumped back, horrified.

"Don't hurt me! I didn't know they were your people!"

"You said it yourself," the captain snarled, "I would have done it myself."

Reaching up, he grabbed a hook and wrapped the cord around the alien's body. When he let go, the alien was lifted up, his head hanging down.

"How did you say this works? Like this?" The captain's hand was a vise around the alien's neck. A mechanical humming built to a crescendo and sparks flew all around. The alien screamed.

Le yelled out. "Captain!"

But the captain was beyond hearing. For an agonizing minute, he clutched the screaming alien as arcs of electric current jumped across the wires. When the alien grew silent, Edison let go.

Immediately the change in him was apparent. Instead of haggard and bent over, he stood up straight, flexing his arms and rolling his neck. His skin had a sheen that hadn't been there before. His eyes looked brighter—and paradoxically darker.

"You look distressed, Lieutenant," the captain said. Even his voice was different—less refined, more muddied. "Do you have a problem?"

"No, Captain."

"Good. Now we may have a way to leave this godforsaken place. While I return to the ship, you and Lt. Wolff see what you can do to get the drones operational. We might be able to program them to do repairs. And if that doesn't work, we might be able to use those flitters to break orbit long enough to look for help."

Le nodded, afraid to try to speak. His voice would break, he was sure.

Ultimately the captain's trek back to the _Franklin_ had been a fool's errand, the crew left behind missing and presumed dead.

"I closed out my logs," the captain said when he returned empty-handed. "There's nothing for us there now."

It was true. Even if the drones could repair the _Franklin_ , they needed more than three people to fly a starship. The only hope was to scan for passing freighters and adapt the flitters so they could achieve escape velocity.

How naïve that plan seems to him now. Instead, as starvation loomed, they had equipped the flitters with small particle cannons and had started shooting down passing ships—not for the ships, but for their crew. Slowly, slowly, Jessica Wolff and Captain Edison and even he, Anderson Le, started to take on the attributes of those aliens they consumed. His skin thickened and darkened; ridges grew along his jaw and eyebrows, lengthening his chin and changing the whorls of his ears into curled indentations. As his esophagus stretched and his palate and teeth shifted position, the only languages he could bend his tongue around were alien ones, the sibilant syllables and guttural stops more appropriate for someone named Manas.

Anderson Le—what little part of him remained—weakly recoiled at the growing rage of his captain—his smoldering revenge plotted against the Federation. But as the months of exile turned into years and then into decades, he knew they could never return. Even if they wanted to, the world they had known had changed too much, if all the data gleaned from Federation signals was to be believed.

A weaker world than they had left—a world of soft compromises—a world that would never understand, much less condone, what they had been forced to do to survive.

"Unity is not your strength!" Krall said to Lieutenant Uhura, but Manas remembered a time when he was young when unity was celebrated. _Bhinneka Tunggal Ika_. Unity in Diversity. Many Yet One.

What would his parents say if they could see him now? His parents who had championed education, who were so proud of their son the professor?

His parents, of course, had been dead a century by now. He tucked those thoughts back where they belonged, out of his conscious thoughts.

The noise of the Hilts PX motorbike makes thinking almost impossible. Krall fires shot after shot at what turn out to be holographic images. Meanwhile, Manas sees some of the crew disappearing in an obvious beam out. The strikingly-marked alien who eluded him once before is sneaking along the edge of one of the hive buildings.

Manas flushes hard, intent on redeeming himself.

"Let me deal with them," he says. He holds the Abronath up like a shield. "You've brought us this far. Finish the mission."

Krall eyes him closely—one final assessment—and Manas is relieved when he takes the Abronath and thrusts the gun in his hand. "Go!" he shouts, and Manas rushes off, looking for the strikingly-marked alien who slipped out of his grasp once before.

This time he won't let her get away. This time he'll finish what he started. This time he'll prove himself worthy of Krall's trust.

And just like that, whatever is left of Anderson Le disappears forever.

 **Author's Notes: The end is in sight—just a few more chapters. They are outlined and ready to flesh out as I can get time!**

 **Joe Taslim, the actor who plays Manas, really is from Palembang, Indonesia, and really is a former judo star!**

 **Thanks for letting me know if you are still reading and still enjoying! I appreciate hearing from you!**


	14. Flying Lessons

**Chapter 14: Flying Lessons**

 **Disclaimer: Free fun.**

The first time Hikaru Sulu sat behind the controls of an aircraft, he was a nine-year-old playing hooky from school. He pretended to have a fever when his mother came to see why he was still in bed one morning, and though she was clearly skeptical, she hefted her satchel full of legal briefs, kissed him on the cheek, and cautioned him against waking his dad, a botanist who studied night blooming plants and worked third shift at the Bay Area Botanical Research Center in Alameda.

He'd wanted to fly as long as he could remember: To be liberated from the shackles of the earth—airborne, defying gravity, free to go anywhere he wanted—as fast as he wanted. He watched his parents whenever they were at the controls of the family flitter, memorizing the settings for pitch and altitude, noting how to adjust speed control, identifying the fuel gauge and flight transponder.

Yet here he was, having broken into his mother's personal flitter parked in the apartment garage using her thumbprint—finagled when he asked her to hand him a glass of water that morning—his heart pounding, the control panel suddenly alien and baffling. Now that he was sitting in the pilot's seat, he wasn't sure how to engage the ignition—nor what to do once he figured that out. His palms were sweaty and he rubbed them across his thighs.

The smart thing to do would be to climb back out and head to his room.

Before he had time to change his mind, he darted out his hand and pressed a green button. The flitter roared to life.

Edging out of the parking bay took longer than it should have, but once he was out of the garage, he hit the accelerator and felt a thrill as his stomach lurched and the flitter rose several hundred feet. Nudging the controls forward, he joined the traffic lane circling San Francisco. An entire lap around the city took less than ten minutes, but it was enough to satisfy him.

For now.

For several weeks he reveled in the memory and confessed his adventure to no one, but soon enough he was restless, waiting for an opportunity to take the flitter out again.

His chance came one Saturday when his parents left him and his older brother, Ichiro, at home while they did some holiday shopping.

"I'm going to the park to meet Sansan," he told Ichiro as soon as his parents were safely away. Ichiro hardly glanced up from the book he was reading. A better student than Hikaru, Ichiro often spent his free time doing schoolwork, sometimes obsessively. He rarely went outside, much less went to the park.

The second flitter excursion wasn't as successful as the first. This time as he swooped under a bridge, he scraped the right aerilon, taking off the paint and leaving a jagged dent. When his mother found out—because mothers always find out—Hikaru expected to be grounded—literally and figuratively—for the rest of his life.

To his astonishment, his parents enrolled him in a flying club instead. His weekends became joyous gatherings with like-minded kids who learned air safety and basic flying techniques in practice flitters. Before long, Hikaru had mastered the basics and was chafing to do more—which he did on the sly. When the local police contacted his parents about surveillance tapes that showed him buzzing the communications tower at the top of Twin Peaks, his parents surprised him again, hiring a retired Starfleet pilot for private lessons.

By the time he was 16, he could fly any personal craft. Single-seater flitter, multi-passenger runabout, racing cruiser—he found that as soon as he put his hands on the control bar, he instinctively knew what to do. It wasn't a talent that garnered much applause, however. No one—least of all Hikaru—thought of what he could do in a cockpit as a serious talent. A nifty parlor trick, certainly, but nothing more.

Even when he applied for early admission to Starfleet Academy, he listed botany as his primary study focus. Several botanists could be posted on a mid-size research vessel—up to a dozen on a starship—but those same ships needed far fewer helmsmen. Going a science route made more sense than training as a pilot.

When he was denied early admission, he would have given up on Starfleet altogether if his piloting instructor hadn't encouraged him to try again. Retired from service, Commander Ito was an imposing figure. Barely five feet tall, she wore her gray hair cropped short and held herself ramrod straight.

"Figure out why they turned you down and fix it," she said.

"How would I know?" he asked. Commander Ito pursed her lips and shrugged.

"Ask to see your admission scores," she said.

"What if they won't show them to me?"

"What if they do? You might learn something useful about yourself."

And he had. All those years of spending more time flying than studying had taken a toll on his academic test scores.

"Here's the number of a good astrophysics tutor," Commander Ito said the next time Hikaru had a lesson with her. "Her schedule is busy, but if you want to pass the entrance exams, you need to spend more time with her and less with me."

Hikaru looked down at the small notecard Commander Ito pressed into his hand. "What kind of name is T'Nar?"

"Her father is an adjutant at the Vulcan Embassy," Commander Ito said. "T'Nar is your age, I think. She's one of my pupils."

"She likes to fly?"

"That surprises you?"

"No!" The lie made his face flush. Of course he was surprised. Weren't Vulcans interested only in math and science? That a Vulcan teenager might enjoy the same things he did caught Hikaru off guard.

He contacted T'Nar mostly because he knew Commander Ito expected him to—but he was also curious. Occasionally he saw Vulcans on the streets of San Francisco, most of them dressed in flowing jackets and robes that reminded him of traditional Japanese _haori_ and _yukata_. Unapproachable—that's how he and his friends described them. Unfriendly. Stern. He knew it was a stereotype, and probably unfair, but until he met T'Nar, Hikaru had never spoken to a Vulcan in person.

The tearoom where they agreed to meet one Saturday was crowded, but Hikaru spotted T'Nar as soon as he walked in. Her pointed ears and upswept brows gave her away as a Vulcan, but she could have passed as an ordinary human teenager otherwise. She wore the same dark stretch jeans the girls at his school all seemed to wear now, and her t-shirt sported the name of a popular musical group. Most surprising, T'Nar wore her hair—black with pink and purple dyed streaks—pulled up into a messy topknot.

Obviously, he had a lot to learn about Vulcans.

As he made his way across the room, T'Nar stood up at the table where she had a pot of tea and two small cups laid out. She lifted her hand and waved him over, a gesture so human that Hikaru had a sense of whiplash. What had he expected? That all Vulcans would be exactly like his misinformed stereotypes? This girl was anything but unapproachable, unfriendly, stern.

"T'Nar?"

"Were you in doubt?"

"Uh, no." Hikaru flushed in embarrassment. T'Nar did not smile but she seemed amused nonetheless. He sat down and she immediately poured him a cup of tea.

"You are Hikaru Sulu, rejected by Starfleet Academy for your poor performance on the math and science entrance exams." Her tone was matter-of-fact but Hikaru had the sense that she was teasing him somehow. It took the sting out of her words.

"I am," he said. "What about you?"

"I am the person you will thank after you pass the retakes."

"Have you ever done this before? You know, tutored someone?"

T'Nar lifted her cup and cradled it in her hand. "If you are asking me if I know more math and science than you do, then be assured that I do."

This time her smile was unmistakable. Hikaru laughed in spite of himself.

"I guess you're the teacher for me, then," he said. "How much is this going to cost me?"

"A trade."

"What?"

"What do you have to trade? I am not interested in working for credits."

He was flabbergasted. He didn't own anything he thought she might want. A service, then?

"I can give you an insider's tour of the city," he suggested. "Show you all the places the tourists don't know about."

T'Nar gave him that same amused look. "San Francisco? I was born here."

Another feeling of whiplash—and again Hikaru's face flushed.

"Oh! Well, why don't you tell me what you had in mind? For a trade?"

Instead of answering, T'Nar took a deep swallow of her tea and put her cup on the table.

"How do you feel about being my partner in crime?"

Hikaru almost choked on his tea. "Excuse me?"

T'Nar's expression went blank. "Perhaps I have misunderstood the metaphor? A partner in crime is a companion, a friend?"

"No! See, a partner in crime means-" He looked up and caught a peculiar gleam in T'Nar's eyes. "Wait a minute. You've lived here all your life. You know what it means. You're teasing me!"

"Vulcans do not tease," T'Nar said immediately. A beat, and then the corner of her lip turned up and she added, "Nor do we lie."

They started meeting at the teashop every Saturday, spending the first two hours doing astrophysics calculations—or at least, Hikaru worked the problems while T'Nar alternately instructed and berated him for not working more quickly. When he reached the "my-head-will-explode-if-I-have-to-continue-this" stage, they took their flitters joyriding, sometimes up to the headlands where they parked and watched for whale pods, sometimes on a looping route riding the updraft from the Santa Cruz Mountains. Once they spent an afternoon wandering through the ancient redwoods of Muir Woods, Hikaru giving a running narrative about the different types of sequoias.

"Finally," he said as they headed back to their flitters later, "I know more about something than you do!"

One Saturday when he arrived for his tutorial, T'Nar met him at the door of the teashop. She was dressed in a somber gray tunic that came to her ankles and a long overvest with Vulcan calligraphy embroidered down one shoulder. Instead of being arranged in the usual messy topknot, her hair was pulled back in a simple clip, all the bright stripes gone. She was almost unrecognizable this way, as if her life and sparkle had been leached away.

"Let's study later," she said, motioning for him to follow her to the parking area. She led him to a sleek-looking multipurpose runabout large enough to carry four passengers.

"Where'd you get this?"

"It belongs to the embassy," she said, palming open the doors. "We are borrowing it."

"What do you mean _we_? Where are we going?"

T'Nar slid into the pilot's seat and Hikaru had no choice but to climb in on the other side. They lifted off at once, heading out over the bay.

For several minutes neither spoke. The runabout was a smoother, faster ride than a personal flitter, and Hikaru divided his attention between watching T'Nar handle the controls and tracking their progress over the landscape.

"When are you going to tell me where we're going?"

T'Nar darted a glance in his direction. Something in her expression was off, as if she were flustered or anxious. Over the months that they had been friends, Hikaru had seen T'Nar serious, purposeful, amused, indifferent, even fatigued. Whatever she was feeling today was something he hadn't witnessed before. He felt the hair on the back of his neck rise.

"What's going on, T'Nar?"

"I was going to apprise you of it later, but I might as well tell you now," she said. "My family is moving back to Vulcan. My father has accepted a job at the Vulcan Science Academy in Shi'Kahr."

For a moment Hikaru was too astonished to say anything. He averted his gaze, watching a series of canyons and hills spreading out into flat grassland to the east.

"Wow," he said at last, trying hard not to sound as sad as he felt. "I bet you'll be glad to be home again."

T'Nar blinked and kept her eyes ahead. "My parents are eager to return to Vulcan," she said, "but this is my home."

The truth of her words felt like a slap he hadn't seen coming. He cast about for something to say to break the heavy mood.

"You could stay on Earth and go to Starfleet Academy," he said. "You said you would like to travel in deep space. With your interest in engineering—"

"I have accepted a scholarship to the Vulcan Institute of Technology," T'Nar said abruptly. "I have to go."

"Not if you don't want to!"

T'Nar shook her head. "You do not understand, Hikaru. My obligations to my family require my obedience in this matter. They believe it is time for me to—follow Vulcan traditions."

"But if you tell them—"

"We are here."

He looked up, noticing for the first time the looming construction towers on the horizon. Like ghostly blue fingers they reached up from the prairie, holding spiderwebs of metal.

"Riverside Shipyards," Hikaru said, his voice reverent. Access to the site was restricted and hard to come by. Suddenly he understood why T'Nar had borrowed the embassy runabout.

"Let me do the talking," she said, and almost on cue, the transmitter beeped and a security officer's voice demanded their identification. Hikaru held his breath as T'Nar explained that she was an embassy employee with a visitor's pass.

"Cleared for landing," the voice over the transmitter said at last.

T'Nar put the runabout down on the far side of the landing pad. When they were sure that no one was close enough to see them clearly, they popped the doors and stepped out into the bright Iowa sunlight.

"Too bad we can't actually go up," Hikaru said, craning his neck up at the skeleton of a starship under construction.

"That is not why we are here," T'Nar said, gently touching his elbow and pointing in the other direction. There in a loose nest of scaffolding was a retired NX-class starship.

Or at least a quarter-size mock-up of a starship, built during the original production design phase. Such mock-ups were routinely used to test starship designs before committing to a full-scale version and all the expense that incurred. Once the designs were set, the mock-ups served as trainers for pilots and engineering cadets.

"It is being restored as a museum piece," T'Nar said, answering Hikaru's unspoken question. "For the Vulcan Institute of Technology. They have an extensive showcase of space-faring ships there. Do you want to go inside?"

"Can we? I mean, is it allowed?"

T'Nar shot him one of her amused looks. "Human memory is fallible," she said, "so you may not recall the terms of our agreement. I indicated at our first meeting that you are my partner in crime."

"So we aren't allowed in," Hikaru said slowly, "but we're going in anyway."

If the enclosure had a security guard, they never saw one. Instead, climbing over the fence was a simple matter, almost as easy as entering the ship itself through one of the lower cargo hatches. That required some jimmying of the lock, something T'Nar did with what seemed to be practiced ease.

The cargo hatch swung open and the lights came on, exposing a narrow hallway that led to a stairwell with steep metal steps ending in a Jefferies tube. Climbing up, Hikaru saw that they were on E deck.

"A captain would have had quarters here," T'Nar said. "The other officers were on the next deck up."

"Let's go to engineering," Hikaru said, and T'Nar nodded, leading the way to the turbolift at the end of the hall.

"Everything seems to be in working order," T'Nar said, twisting the control lever in the lift. The doors slid shut and the lift rose so swiftly that Hikaru's knees buckled slightly.

The engineering deck also appeared fully restored, the equipment gleaming, the gently thrumming monitors near the warp core colorful and bright.

The bridge was their next stop. Both walked past the captain's chair and went straight to the helm, Hikaru running his hand along the top of the console.

"I've always wanted to sit here," he said, laughing. "Imagine what that would feel like, controlling a starship. Even one this size."

"You can, you know." T'Nar pressed a series of buttons on the console and the viewscreen flickered once and came on. "The controls have been slaved from engineering so a transport ship can tow it to Vulcan. I read that the transfer is planned for next week."

"I wish I could see them take off," Hikaru said. "I assume they'll have to do a hard start in order to generate enough speed for the stabilizers to provide lift."

"Your assumption is correct," T'Nar said. "I ran the numbers before we came. Of course, it would be easier to _drop_ the ship from a great height and reach terminal velocity for the impulse engines to kick in, but given that we have to make a horizontal take off—"

"Hold on," Hikaru said. "What are you talking about?"

"I believe I was clear. A vertical drop would better facilitate—"

"After that. The part about how we have to make a horizontal take off. And how you ran the numbers. What do you have up your sleeve?"

By now Hikaru knew T'Nar well enough not to be fooled when she aped ignorance of human figurative language. Still, she tugged on her sleeve and held up her arm.

"As you humans say, I am here to lend a hand. Or an arm. As your astrophysics tutor, I want to see if your education is complete. The best way to do that is to watch you fly something more complicated than your flitter."

"Let's say we do get this ship in the air. Then what? Where are we going to go? I'll tell you. To prison, for theft of Starfleet property."

"Unlikely," T'Nar said dismissively. "The ship has already been deeded to the Vulcan Institute. And if the authorities object to our actions, I will take full responsibility. You will not go to prison."

Hikaru laughed. "But if you go to prison, who will tutor me in astrophysics?"

An oddly serious look came over T'Nar. "Have you not realized by now that you no longer need my tutelage? You are more than prepared to pass your Academy exams."

With a jolt he knew it was true. No longer did he feel lost and frustrated when T'Nar gave him equations to figure or calculations to do. Moving within the numbers of space-time felt… natural.

"You know this is a crazy idea," he said, waving his arm around the bridge. "We can't really do this."

"We have to," T'Nar said. "We might never have another chance to do something like this together."

Even now, years later, Hikaru can't fully explain why he agreed to T'Nar's crazy plan. The thrill and the adventure, certainly, but there was something else, too, that made him take his place at the helm, as if he belonged there, T'Nar managing the slaved engineering controls from the science station. Perhaps it was knowing that the ship was ready and waiting for a trip to Spacedock and they weren't actually _stealing_ it. Not technically, anyway.

Or maybe it was T'Nar herself, the way she was pulling inward and away, the sadness Hikaru sensed when she talked about leaving for Vulcan and a life there, the feeling that she somehow _needed_ to do this.

With a sigh, he gave her a thumbs up. The ignition sequence rumbled and the bridge lights flickered. Hikaru reached out slowly to the helm console, his eyes racing over the indicators. There, the forward stabilizers. He tapped once, twice, and the ship lurched forward, the scaffolding surrounding it falling away. Grabbing the control toggle bar, he pushed—and the impulse engine caught and spluttered and then purred as the viewscreen showed them moving toward the security fence—and then flattening it before the ship gained altitude.

"You are doing it!" T'Nar shouted, unmistakable joy in her voice. Hikaru's heart was racing faster than the ship. They continued to accelerate and rise, first through light blue skies and clouds and almost too quickly through the stratosphere and into the deep purple and black of orbit. Alarms were clanging and Hikaru could hear the voice of a traffic controller warning them to stop, but it didn't matter. He'd never felt so alive, so exhilarated. Looking down, he saw that T'Nar had already sent the coordinates for Spacedock to the helm, and less than a minute later they arrived, small cruisers rushing to surround them and escort them to a docking bay.

Security personnel hustled them off the bridge immediately. As they walked side-by-side down the corridor of Spacedock, surrounded by gray-clad armed officers, Hikaru felt an electric snap on his hand. _T'Nar, brushing her fingers across his palm._

"This was my parting gift for you," she said, her eyes gleaming in the bright overhead lights.

From the corner of his eye Hikaru saw someone move forward—a Vulcan man, dressed in a gray overcoat with the same calligraphy as that on T'Nar's jacket. Her father, his face impassive, but communicating an agitation through the angle of his shoulders, the cant of his head. The security officers stopped and T'Nar moved soundlessly toward him.

"I'll see you soon," Hikaru called out, more to reassure himself than anything else. T'Nar glanced over her shoulder and shook her head.

"We leave for Vulcan within the hour," she said. "That is why this had to be now."

She turned and followed her father down the rest of the corridor, Hikaru watching until they were out of sight.

His own parents didn't arrive for several hours, his mother stony with silence, his father genuinely grieved. No use trying to explain to them why he'd done it. He could hardly explain it to himself.

No one spoke on the shuttle ride back to planetside, but as soon as they entered their apartment, his mother rounded on him, fury in her expression.

"You realize this will cost you any chance at the Academy," she said.

He didn't try to refute her. He knew she was right.

And she would have been, if Commander Ito hadn't intervened on his behalf. The day before the next scheduled seating of the entrance exam, she called to tell him that he was being given another chance.

"If you are still interested," she said, and Hikaru answered breathlessly that he was. "There's one condition, however," she added. "I told them you wanted admission to the pilot program. No more of this silly botany stuff, okay?"

* * *

"Mr. Sulu, you _can_ , you know _,_ fly this thing? Right?"

The captain's face is pinched, like a caricature of someone suffering from a toothache.

Hikaru turns halfway around in the seat at the _USS Franklin's_ helm.

"You kidding me, sir?"

The captain leans back in his chair. "Fantastic." He says it like a wry joke, but Hikaru isn't fooled. Captain Kirk knows he can fly anything—even this old rust bucket.

From the navigation console, Chekov gives him an appraising look.

"Mr. Sulu, we have to achieve terminal velocity in order for the stabilizers to provide lift. Are you sure this drop is high enough to do that?"

"We'll find out."

As he splays his hand over the control panel, he feels the rest of the crew on the bridge tense up.

"Call it, Mr. Sulu," Captain Kirk says.

"Aye, aye, Captain."

It's all in his hands now.

"Mr. Chekov, you ready to hit the forward stabilizers on my mark, one-quarter impulse?"

"Aye."

The ship rumbles to life.

"One-half impulse, Mr. Chekov!"

"Aye!"

The ship rocks and teeters at the end of the cliff.

"Easy, Mr. Sulu. Let's not break her in half," the captain says.

A sickening lurch, and they are away, the _Franklin_ in freefall. Hikaru's eyes never move from the distance display on the viewscreen as the bottom of the canyon rises up to meet the plummeting ship.

"Anytime, Mr. Sulu!" the captain calls.

Not yet, he thinks. He runs the astrophysics calculations through his head automatically, waiting for the right moment to power the stabilizers. Ragged rock formations and evergreen trees loom up like spikes. The ship shakes and he waits for a telltale judder only starship pilots seem to recognize.

The floor beneath his feet gives a distinctive vibration.

"Now, Mr. Chekov!" he shouts, and the stabilizers fire. At once the forward momentum slows and the Franklin makes a sickening curve, arcing up. The viewscreen is filled with giant knife blades of stone, and Hikaru scoots the _Franklin_ through a narrow pass of mountains and up into the clear blue sky of Altamid.

They're on the way to _Yorktown_ at last. He pushes his worry about Ben and Demora aside, concentrating on the shifting calculations he must do to keep the _Franklin_ headed safely through the nebula. He checks his numbers with the computer but he's never wrong, T'Nar's long ago tutoring paying dividends so much later.

As he often does when he sits at the helm, he takes a moment to remember her. _This was my parting gift to you_ , she said, and at the time—and for a long time afterwards—he thought she meant the adolescent joyride they took on the starship mock-up.

Only later did he realize that she had given him so much more—and that without her, he wouldn't be sitting here now, helmsman for the best damn crew in Starfleet.

 **Author's Note: I apologize for this tardy update. Life interferes just when you don't expect it to! Thanks for reading even though this is late. Thanks doubly for leaving a review. Your words of encouragement are more appreciated than you can know!**


	15. Regrets

**Chapter 15: Regrets**

 **Disclaimer: Just a playground! No money made here!**

Regret is illogical, or so Spock often tells himself. Returning to the past to redo or undo some action, even though technically possible, is, in reality, highly improbable. The past is, therefore, immutable. Unchangeable. Not to be fretted over or regretted.

Or so he tells himself.

Yet the past holds moments he does regret. Moments he would undo or redo if he could.

The worst are regrets about people he has lost. In his infrequent nightmares he still reaches out for his mother's hand as she slips away into the chasm of Vulcan. When he wakes, his face wet, he wishes again that he had not let the argument with his father over accepting a position at Starfleet Academy keep him away from home while he was a cadet, his mother hurt by his distance.

Crossing the long-ago divide between professor and teaching assistant with Nyota, letting their relationship evolve into something too large to ignore—he regrets that, or if not that, exactly, what has happened since. For all the comfort and beauty their relationship has accorded him, would it have been better not to have traveled that road at all for the pain he is causing her now? Parting ways with little consideration for her feelings in the matter? With less understanding of how shattered her loss makes him feel?

He anticipates regretting the loss of the _Enterprise_ and her crew—the captain most of all, as close to a friend as Spock has ever had. And McCoy, and Mr. Scott, and Sulu and Chekov and all the people he depends on and who, without hesitation, he is willing to sacrifice himself for.

And Ambassador Spock, his loss new and raw, like losing the best part of himself. Spock blinks and thinks of the last time they spoke, a quick meeting on New Vulcan before the _Enterprise_ shipped out on her five-year mission, sharing a cup of tea at a teahouse run by an almost-too-friendly Denobulan. He regrets not seeking him out more, listening to his stories, learning from his hard-earned wisdom.

These thoughts flash through his mind as Leonard McCoy aims the drone ship toward the _Yorktown_. Ahead of them are the three cruisers that peeled off from the disintegrating swarm—presumably carrying Krall and some of his drone soldiers. Without slowing, the cruisers ram the outer portal of the base and disappear. Spock braces as the doctor follows them through the makeshift opening.

Inside the shipping lane are four intercept vehicles that Krall's cruisers dodge neatly, flying up and through the force field that keeps the watercourse in place. Again McCoy heads after them, but as they rise through the water into the open space of _Yorktown_ , Spock sees the cruisers speeding away.

"Do not lose them, Doctor!"

"You're more than welcome to switch places with me, Spock!"

Sparks fly as the little drone ship skitters along the side of building. McCoy's breathing is labored as he struggles to get back on course, but the cruisers dart away.

"Captain, intercepting all three ships is an impossibility!"

Spock hears the alarm in his own voice, something that at one time would have caused him shame. What had the Ambassador told him once, to be himself?

That memory, too, he sets aside for now. The captain's voice comes over the comm again.

"Bones, there's a city plaza coming up. You've got to make sure Krall heads for it."

"Why?"

"Just do it!"

"Hang on!" The drone ship brakes so hard that Spock has to grab the monitor to keep from being flung backward. A pitch to port and from the corner of his eye Spock sees one of Krall's cruisers suddenly in the viewscreen.

"Doctor! You almost hit that ship!"

"That's what I want to do!"

"I fail to see—"

"I'm baiting him, Spock! Now shut up and let me fly this thing!"

The proximity sensors stop their clanging and Spock watches as the indicators slide back into the safety zone. Then a spike as the lead cruiser—Krall's, most likely—comes to within 50 meters.

"They are catching up to us, Doctor!" Spock feels the drone ship accelerate. Krall's cruisers follow.

 _Yorktown_ is organized into multiple communities connected by 17 mile-long shipping lanes that double as the support spines of the base. A central atmosphere processor recirculates the air. Water flowing through canals is both practical and aesthetically pleasing, meandering through reflecting pools and offering a translucent "skylight" to the shipping lanes and underground construction facilities.

Built on the exterior of the shipping lanes, skyscrapers are linked by rapid mass transit trains and serviced by personal flitters parked on rooftop garages. New residents sometimes complain of vertigo—not just from the visual disorientation of buildings and lanes arcing overhead but also from the vagaries of the artificial gravitation—noticeably stronger near the center of the nexus than at the tops of the towering buildings. A gravitational slipstream makes air travel dicey near the hub, with warnings posted about the invisible rush and tug.

Looking down at the waterway, Spock can make out the ghostly image of the _Franklin_ moving through the shipping lane toward the Central Plaza. Why the ship needs to be there—what the captain intends—is a mystery.

Yet Spock instinctively trusts that Jim Kirk has a plan. Whatever else he's learned during his time as first officer, Spock knows that his captain is worth that trust.

 _We make a good team,_ Jim had said in the turbolift before they left for Altamid. True in more ways than one—though the admission causes Spock unexpected pain.

And later, in the mess hall of the _Franklin_ , Jim bunched up a jumpsuit for a pillow as Spock slid awkwardly onto a settee.

"Captain, you must take care of the crew," he said through gritted teeth.

Jim had refused to argue. "That's why I need you around, Spock." Behind the captain, McCoy looked up from sorting through the _Franklin's_ archaic medical equipment.

Their shared secret—that Spock intended to leave Starfleet—hung in the air between them. Spock held his breath, waiting for McCoy to give him away.

Instead, the doctor had thrown up his hands. "These things are from the Dark Ages," he complained, picking up a rusty protoplaser.

As the doctor had loudly reminded him later on the _Franklin's_ transporter pad, he's a doctor, not a pilot—yet here he is, skirting so closely to the waterway that droplets streak across the windscreen. With a sudden burst of speed, McCoy sends the drone ship hurtling past Krall and the other two ships, lapping them easily.

"Doctor, we are—"

"Trust me, Spock! I know what I'm doing!"

The view of buildings is suddenly replaced by blue sky as McCoy takes the drone ship into a tight upward and over maneuver that leaves them facing the approaching cruisers. Spock's stomach lurches uncomfortably as the drone ship dips underneath them and then makes a wide circuit back around.

From his vantage point at the forward monitor, Spock sees the _Franklin_ rise up from the waterway like a breaching whale. Krall's ships plow into the underbelly of the saucer and disappear from sight as the starship settles in the shallow water.

The doctor gives the kind of whoop humans make when they experience elation. A justified emotion, certainly, with the threat to the _Yorktown_ averted.

"Let's find a place to land," McCoy says, and Spock nods. His side aches, and he probably needs further medical attention to complete the tissue repairs the doctor was unable to finish satisfactorily.

"There," Spock says, pointing to a flat-topped area on one of the tallest buildings near the Central Plaza. "We can set down there."

But before they can, he hears the captain's voice on the comm again, telling them that Krall has escaped.

"He's probably heading to the air distribution at the hub," the captain says. "Make a pass over the Central Plaza and look for him. I'm heading up to the gravitational nexus now!"

Most of the people still in the plaza are Starfleet personnel stationed at the base, wearing characteristic gray and maroon uniforms. McCoy takes the drone ship on a slow lap around the perimeter. Nothing—at least no one who looks suspicious or out of place. Perhaps Krall has already entered the distribution center.

"Take the ship to the top of the headquarters tower," Spock says.

McCoy gives a loud snort. "And get us killed!" he says. "Didn't you read those warnings? The gravity slipstream will play havoc with us if we get too close."

He's right, of course, but that doesn't keep Spock from feeling a wave of desperation.

"Then get as close as you can without compromising the ship."

"Aye aye, Captain," McCoy says with a note of sarcasm.

As they ascend, they bob and weave in the uneven gravitational waves.

"There!" Spock sees Jim and another man in a Starfleet uniform airborne in the slipstream. McCoy lets out a curse.

"What are they doing?" McCoy says as Jim and the officer—Krall, apparently—tumble across the polished surface of the headquarters. First Krall, and then the captain, head into the glass enclosed nexus.

From this angle, Spock cannot make out with any precision what is happening. Using the ship's monitor to patch into _Yorktown's_ communication grid, he scans through the signals, finding the open channel between the captain and Mr. Scott.

"What's going on!" McCoy says.

"The captain is having difficulty opening the airlock to release the Abronath. One of the levers is inoperative."

"Dammit, Jim, you won't make it out in time!" McCoy's voice is shrill with panic.

Regret is illogical, but at this moment Spock regrets not being at Jim's side to help him. More than that, he regrets all the times to come when he will not be there when Jim needs him.

* * *

Krall hasn't looked at his reflection in so long that seeing it catches him by surprise. A sliver of glass, the size and shape of a handheld dagger, turns slowly in the air before him, the image of his face—his human face—sliding across the polished surface.

His face is more human than alien now, thanks to the two crewmen he drained in rapid succession after his ship crashed into the saucer of the _Franklin_. He had scrambled out of the drone cruiser and tumbled into the corridor of the starship, the two red-shirted crewmen rushing to subdue—or help—him.

Fools to trust so easily. Soft and vulnerable, the sad fate of humanity. No one who had lived through the Xindi Wars like he had could ever be this stupid. No one who lost family when the Xindi probe destroyed a swath from Florida to Venezuela, blasting 7 million unsuspecting humans to their deaths, would let down their guard.

Even as humanity reeled in shock after the Xindi attack, divisions had played out between those who counseled retaliation and the fools who urged humanity to forgive and forget. Forgive! As if the dead mattered not at all, their sacrifice ignored, or worse, forgotten. He'd lost friends and colleagues in the attack—including a woman he'd loved once—loved enough to offer marriage to. He'd been little more than a kid when he fell in love—23 years young, a private in the newly formed MACOs, and when she'd turned him down he'd been equal parts disappointed and relieved. Better to live unattached if the soldier's life was his—and after the attack, his unit was deployed on a ship not so different from the _Franklin_ , patrolling Earth and waiting as Captain Jonathan Archer's crew on the _Enterprise_ went out to meet the enemy.

The man he had been then—Balthazar Edison—chafed at being passed over for the mission on the _Enterprise_. To be on the frontlines, in hand-to-hand combat with creatures so alien that they looked more like walking reptiles than sentient beings—that would have satisfied him as a soldier. Anything else was a waste of his time.

He'd felt that way through the subsequent Romulan wars, longing for the physicality of conflict, impatient with incessant, useless diplomacy. Then the Romulans retreated and a neutral zone was established, signaling the end of contact—leading, Edison realized later, to his own obsolescence. The Federation charter was signed, the MACOs disbanded, and he reluctantly assumed command of the _USS Franklin_ , a ship armed with little more than pulsed phase cannons and spatial torpedoes. Sitting ducks if they ever encountered serious resistance. He'd argued almost to the point of insubordination with Admiral Grant about improving the armaments before shipping out.

As it turned out, no additional weapons would have helped them. Sucked into a wormhole at the edge of the Gargarin Radiation Belt, the _Franklin_ had, from Starfleet's point of view, simply vanished. No rescue mounted, no deep investigation into the disappearance. Cut loose and left to die—that was what the bureaucrats had chosen.

For a long time after the _Franklin_ crash landed on Altamid, Edison stayed alive from rage. But as his crew died, one by one, until only he and Wolff and Le were still standing, he gave up being Balthazar Edison and became Krall to survive.

Now here he is, staring at an image of the man he used to be.

The young captain in front of him is just the kind of fool humanity has become. Krall read his logs where he admitted to being bored as a peacekeeper—ignoring all that is good and adventurous and strong.

A wobble and the sliver turns slightly, the reflection of Krall's face replaced by the piercing white light of _Yorktown's_ artificial sunlight glimmering on the glass. With a start, he grabs the glass shard and leaps at Jim Kirk.

Easy prey.

But to his astonishment, Kirk meets him with a savage kick. Krall falls back—and too late, feels the sharp prickles of the Abronath already beginning to consume him.

The suction begins slowly at first as the massive air processor shudders to a halt. Then he's caught in the pull, his body flailing wildly as he spins toward the airlock and space beyond.

Behind him Jim Kirk grabs at the last lever and the airlock opens. If Krall has to die, at least he is taking the young captain with him.

And then to his horror he sees it—a drone ship rising up from nowhere, the captain rolling across the uneven surface. _Too late, captain,_ Krall thinks as he slips out into space. _Join me now_.

But, no! As the airlock closes again, the last thing Krall sees is a hand reaching from the ship to grab the captain, pulling him to safety, anchoring him to the world of the living.

 **Author's Notes: Two more chapters! Thanks for continuing to be such supportive readers.**

 **This chapter makes multiple references to the show** _ **Enterprise**_ **—including the MACOs and the Xindi attack on Earth. I missed the show's four seasons when it aired a dozen years ago, but since then I've watched them several times on Netflix. If you are a _Star Trek_ fan but haven't seen the show, give it a chance. It isn't perfect, but no _Star Trek_ is….and my philosophy is the same one I have about chocolate—you can never have too much! **


	16. Love and Mercy

**Chapter 16: Love and Mercy**

 **Disclaimer: Free to good home.**

Nyota's head bobs forward and she comes to with a start. The chair in the corner of the hospital room is unusually small and cramped, and she twists in it slightly, trying to get into a more comfortable position. She's been here since Spock came out of surgery already in a deep healing trance. Glancing up at the clock over his bed, she adds up the hours. Twelve? Thirteen? No wonder she's falling asleep.

Except for nurses coming by regularly to check the monitors, the room has been quiet. She knows that Jim Kirk told the crew to stay away—that Spock's recovery depends on the rest he gets now. The captain's right, of course, but it makes for a lonely vigil.

She stretches again and gives up trying to get comfortable. Standing up, she takes a step forward and leans over the bio-bed to get a closer look at Spock's face. He looks the same as he has for hours, pale and pasty, his hair matted with sweat. His dark lashes flutter occasionally as some internal demon shakes him—not enough to rouse him, but enough to worry Nyota. She remembers how intense his nightmares were right after Vulcan was destroyed—how long it took for him to sleep untroubled through the night.

"This is how I like him best—not talking." Leonard McCoy is suddenly at her elbow, a PADD in his hand. She glances up and gives a rueful grin. For all his crabby bluster, McCoy doesn't try too hard to hide his genuine affection for Spock.

"How's he—"

"About what we expected," McCoy says. "It's gonna take some time. All we can do right now is wait. I'm more worried about you. When did you last eat something?"

"I'm not hungry."

"That's not what I asked, is it? You aren't going to do anyone any good if you faint on your feet from lack of food. Come on. He's not going anywhere, and if he wakes up, I'll know." He lifts the PADD in his hand. "See? I'm keeping track of all his vitals right here."

Nyota sighs. She knows that arguing will get her nowhere when McCoy is in this mood. "I guess I could use a cup of coffee," she says.

McCoy rolls his eyes and leads the way down the corridor to a lounge with upholstered sofas and a new-fangled food replicator built into one wall.

"Coffee. Cream, no sugar," McCoy says, and a moment later he hands her a mug. Then he orders sandwiches for them both and they sit on adjacent sofas.

Nyota reads most people well, and Leonard McCoy is usually an open book. Several years of weekly poker games at the Academy have helped her catalog his moods. The tilt of his head, the gleam in his eyes; to her, at least, these broadcast the difference between a royal flush and a pair of deuces in his hand.

This ability to read people isn't some nifty parlor trick but a key to her abilities as an officer. She thinks with satisfaction about her part in identifying Balthazar Edison from a snippet of sound and a flash of a grainy image on the _Franklin's_ crew vid. As improbable as her conclusion was—that a man who should have been dead for 100 years was somehow transformed into Krall—Jim Kirk had not hesitated to believe her. He knows, as she does, that her skills are exceptional.

Yet for all that, she can't get a read on the doctor's mood right now. He's clearly uneasy, as if he wants to both tell her something and keep something hidden. She sips her coffee and waits for him to start.

"So," he says at last, "how are you? I mean, how are you _really_?" He flashes a tired smile.

"You're asking me about Spock," she says.

He nods. "Last time we talked, you said you were okay about moving on."

"I am."

"Yet here you are."

"Just because we aren't together doesn't mean I don't care about him."

"Yeah, well, about that _not together_ thing. I wouldn't bet on it."

There it is again, that look on the doctor's face that suggests he is hiding something.

"What are you talking about?"

McCoy takes a noisy swig of his coffee. "You two talk any before he went into surgery? I didn't think so. Let's just say that for a man who doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve, Spock didn't mind showing everyone what he feels about you."

"Now I know you're joking."

McCoy looks down at the sandwich in his left hand, his eyes not meeting hers, one of his tells when he's trying to decide what to do. She hears him give a deep sigh before he straightens up, puts his sandwich down on the saucer, and meets her gaze.

"I probably shouldn't tell you this, but I'll kick myself if I don't. Your unemotional boyfriend actually used the words _affection_ and _respect_ to describe his feelings for you. Out loud. In front of lots of people."

In spite of herself, Nyota laughs. From anyone else, _affection_ and _respect_ would sound lukewarm. From Spock—

"That's not all," McCoy says. Again he pauses, as if weighing how much to tell her.

"Go on," she prods.

"When we were planning how to get into Krall's compound, the captain wanted Spock to stay behind and monitor everything. He could hardly stand upright, and I know he was in a lot a pain. But what did he do? Insisted on coming along."

"That doesn't mean—"

"Said he wanted to come because _you_ were there." McCoy waits a beat. "Don't you get it? He was barely stitched together, but he didn't care."

"He wanted to rescue the crew," Nyota says. "That's who he is."

"He wanted to rescue _you,_ " McCoy says, correcting her. "And _that's_ who he is."

Like everyone else, she's been in such a whirlwind since the rescue from the compound and the pursuit of Krall's cruisers to and through the _Yorktown_ that she hasn't had time to reflect on much. McCoy's narrative makes sense, though, and helps explain the puzzle of Spock's sudden appearance at the compound.

After Krall took the Abronath and hurried to a cruiser, Manus was left behind, his pistol held loosely in his hand as he tried to follow Jim Kirk's dizzying circuit around the compound. Then something caught Manus' attention—Jaylah sprawled on the top of one of the squat Fabonian huts like a sniper, picking off the drone soldiers—and he rushed away, leaving Nyota alone.

As she made her way through the maze of rocks, Nyota had heard the distinctive whistle of drone fire—and the even more distinctive exhalation of breath that sounded like no one else. Spock, sprawled on the ground, fending off two drones. With a well-placed thump of a handy rock, she felled one of the attackers, the other one falling in sync. Spock's surprise—and imperious "Clearly I am here to rescue _you_ ,"—almost made her smile.

Now she thinks about that moment again—thinks about how Spock was there because he insisted on it. Not a referendum on her own ability to help herself, but some need drove him to be the one to see that she was safe.

Odd that she hasn't considered this before now.

From the other sofa, McCoy watches her processing his words. "And that's not all," he says. "Remember how I told you that Spock asked for all the research I could find about that weird Vulcan syndrome—how so many survivors are dying and no one knows why?"

" _Khaf-spol lak-tra._ _"_

"Whatever it's called. Some of the researchers are worried that unless there's a concentrated baby boom soon, the population will reach a tipping point of no return. Vulcans will die out as a species—"

"I know," Nyota says, her throat tightening. "He told me."

"He was going to talk to you about it some more," McCoy says. Nyota blinks rapidly in surprise. _He was? After goodbye, what was left to say?_

McCoy clears his throat. "He, uh, he got some news that changed his plans—"

The PADD beeps and McCoy picks it up. "Speak of the devil," he says. He tips his cup up and drains the rest of his coffee.

Nyota's heart beats so hard that her chest hurts. "What is it?"

"Let's get going. He's awake."

* * *

The Vulcan embassy on _Yorktown_ is a single floor in the headquarters building, the staff a mere two dozen clerical workers and junior adjutants who handle routine communiqués and shipments from New Vulcan, arrange travel visas, and manage other bureaucratic necessities. Most of the floor is sparsely decorated, the walls bare or nearly so, the furniture more utilitarian than aesthetically pleasing. Before the genocide, official Vulcan buildings would have been ornate and almost plush. Now what resources are available are funneled into efforts to rebuild the colony on New Vulcan.

Perhaps to little avail, Spock thinks. The odds that the colony will fail are—

He stops that line of thinking. Sometimes knowing the odds of something is unwarranted.

Two hours after Dr. M'Benga helped him come out of the healing trance, he's just now beginning to feel clear-headed enough to do what he's been contemplating since he first confided in Dr. McCoy on Altamid. A long overdue conversation with Nyota, but first—

"I am Commander Spock," he says to the Vulcan receptionist at the front desk. "I was told you have a package I need to retrieve."

Without looking, he feels Nyota at his elbow, and he has a wave of gratitude that she has accompanied him here. The Vulcan receptionist stands wordlessly and retreats through a door behind her, presumably to get the package. Sure enough, in ten seconds she appears again, a box in her hands.

As Spock signs for it, the receptionist says, "If you like, there is a private meditation area at the end of the hall. It is currently unoccupied."

Spock starts to refuse but catches a glimpse of Nyota looking up at him. No purpose will be served in waiting.

"Yes, thank you," he says, and the receptionist points the way.

The meditation area is a small room with intricate wood inlays and multicolored glass and mirrored inserts on the curved walls. The floor is polished stone with two wooden backless seats facing each other. Spock places the box on the floor and sits gingerly on the wooden seat. Nyota takes the other one, several feet away. For a moment they sit in silence, and then Spock stands and moves the seat closer so that when he sits again, his knees are touching Nyota's. It's how they used to sit whenever they were alone and wanted to talk—eye-to-eye, touching enough to feel the palpable connection that snapped between them like an electric current. To his relief, she does not move away.

In the weeks since they've lived apart—since Nyota moved out of his quarters and into her own assigned ones on the _Enterprise_ —he has not felt the spark that leaps between them now. His breath is shortened by an unexpected wash of heat and desire. She looks up and he knows she feels it, too.

This is part of what he was willing to give up. As if he could simply walk away.

And not just from this elemental, grounded connection, but from everything that is bright and good about her—her keen intelligence and wild enthusiasms and sometimes baffling humor. Her gentleness and wisdom and patience. He remembers opening his eyes in the hospital and looking first for her, only her, and knowing in that moment that in all the days to come, he never wants to wake up without her close by.

"Forgive me," he says, knowing that his words come far short of what he is trying to say. "It was not my intention to hurt you. I thought my duty was…elsewhere. When I heard that the Ambassador had died, I believed my own wishes were irrelevant."

"And now?"

He hesitates, pulling inward enough to gather his thoughts.

It is true that Ambassador Spock's work on New Vulcan is unfinished, that Spock may be the only person who can continue it with the same vision and momentum. To serve his people that way—it would honor the Ambassador and make his father proud.

Yet his life in Starfleet is a service, too, and not just to Vulcan but to all the people of the Federation. Leaving it feels like a betrayal of the people he knows best—not just Nyota, but Jim—who would have died if Spock had not been there to catch him and pull him into the drone ship.

 _What would I do without you_ , the captain had said, breathless and bloody—and safe.

The question had hung in the air between them as McCoy piloted the little drone ship to a relatively smooth landing.

Leaving Jim and the rest of the crew feels unbearable in this moment—and more than that, wrong.

"I will understand if you tell me otherwise," he says to Nyota, holding out his upright palm, "but I believe that what you and I had—what we can _have_ —is worth our time and effort to restore."

To his growing alarm, Nyota does not reach for his hand.

"I _was_ hurt," she says at last. "You made your decision without any concern for my feelings. How do I know that you won't do that again in the future?"

Her expression is almost stern, or skeptical. He has no idea what he should say to convince her of his sincerity.

 _I am losing her,_ he thinks, a heavy ache in his side. His fault, this barrier between them. The best thing he can do for her now is to accept her choice and leave her to it. He starts to pull his hand back.

With a darting motion, she reaches out and circles his wrist with her fingers. Warmth floods his body—her warmth, her body heat and high emotions filling him. His breath comes out in a hoarse rush.

"You'll have to earn my trust," she says, her voice breathy and soft. He half closes his eyes to keep from leaning into her against her will—but she surprises him by pulling him forward until their lips meet.

At once his thoughts and hers are tangled in longing and relief. He starts to free his hands to reach around and pull her close but she leans away first, her hand brushing his cheek.

"Later," she says, and he gives an involuntary shudder. "I'm going to leave you to look through these things."

"You can stay."

"Find me when you're finished. We'll talk more then."

As much as he would prefer to have her with him when he opens the box, he understands that earning her trust means letting her take the lead for now.

He nods, and when he can no longer hear her departing footsteps, he positions the box in front of him and looks for a moment at the engraving on the cover.

 _Property of Ambassador Spock._

Lifting the cover, he sees a simple woven garment with the family sigil in gold thread. A ceremonial robe is folded neatly, and tucked in a fold is a small metal rectangle with ornamental interlocking geometric shapes on the cover. Without knowing how he knows, Spock holds the rectangle reverently, unlatching it with his thumb. There inside, as he knew it would be, is a hologram of the Ambassador and his crewmates—the Jim Kirk from another timeline, and Nyota with the same regal stance, and Mr. Scott looking with amusement at the photographer. Dr. McCoy's irritation barely hidden, and Sulu and Chekov, too, standing in formation.

The Ambassador packed this box and left instructions that Spock was to have it. The photograph is not on the top for him to see first without a reason.

In another lifetime, in another universe, the Ambassador made his choice.

 _You must find your own path_ , the older Spock told him more than once. Yet also more than once he'd given Spock a not-so-subtle nudge, encouraging him to stay in Starfleet, to cultivate his friendships there.

What Spock _wants_ and what he feels he _should_ do are two different things. Perhaps there's no help for that, child of two worlds as he is. Perhaps the Ambassador was also torn—but learned to make peace with the road he traveled.

Perhaps that is what everyone does. How odd that he's never considered that before. Never asked Jim Kirk in a private moment if life on the _Enterprise_ has become routine or disappointing, suspecting that the captain would not want to admit such feelings to his first officer. To his friend.

He tilts the photograph and watches the light play over those people from another time and place. Spock doesn't believe in destiny, but he does believe in finding a purpose. Or in making one. Is the message of the photograph that his purpose should also make him…happy?

 _Live long and prosper_ , the Ambassador told him when they finished their tea and the almost-too-friendly Denobulan cleared their table at the teahouse on New Vulcan the last time they met. The traditional words for the _ta'al,_ and Spock had returned them as was proper.

But as he turned to depart, he heard the Ambassador add, "Enjoy your grand adventure. As the humans say, there is nothing else like it."

He had paid little attention to his words at the time, thinking the Ambassador was feeling something akin to nostalgia, remembering his _Enterprise's_ five-year mission and all of the worlds he'd visited in that other universe.

Now he wonders if he meant something else, if he was talking about something much closer at hand, and for all that, more powerful: his affection—no _,_ his _love_ —for Nyota, and his friendship with the captain and the crew.

If he could go back in time—if he could redo or undo that moment—he would ask him to explain.

Since he cannot, he chooses to believe that the Ambassador would give his benediction to what he is going to do now—stay in Starfleet at his captain's side, learning how to be a friend to his crewmates, working to deserve Nyota's love and trust.

 **Author's Note: I had such high ambitions for this chapter—the feels, the resolution of the breakup—that it couldn't come close to my vision. Hopefully it still offers some enjoyment for you, faithful readers. Thank you for all your support.**

 **I have one final chapter planned!**


	17. Ends and Beginnings

**Chapter 17: Ends and Beginnings**

 **Disclaimer: No money made here. Enjoy!**

The party goes on too long for Spock's comfort, but he resists leaving—or suggesting to Nyota that they leave together. An extrovert, she's energized by being surrounded by friends. As he always does when they are in public together, Spock delights in watching her navigate easily between conversations, moving from one knot of people to another, her body language animated and warm where people are celebrating, her voice dropping into a lower register with those who are sharing memories of the lost.

Although he rarely chimes in, he knows she is aware of him, her eye occasionally cast in his direction as if to pull him along with her. He willingly goes.

"I thought you had to finish your mission report," she says during a lull in the festivities, and he pauses long enough to do an internal assessment. He does need to work on his report—timeliness is key, but so is accuracy—and in one dedicated corner of his mind he is writing the report as he sips his drink and savors the new tenderness between them.

"I do, but I thought it would be more pleasing to engage with you socially."

He might not have always felt that, or at the very least, would not have acknowledged it if he had. He can tell she's amused by his confession. The expression on her face is the one she makes before she teases him. "You old romantic, you."

A joking nod to what he isn't—and a sly wink to the deeper part of himself that only she knows.

Looking up, he sees McCoy passing by, darting a meaningful glance at the _vokaya_ necklace Nyota fiddles with idly.

How unexpected that he and the doctor, of all people, would end up sharing secrets.

A crewman who often rotates duty rosters with Nyota wanders over and the two women strike up a conversation. Spock turns slightly to give them their privacy and his gaze lands on Lieutenant Sulu and his husband. They aren't speaking loudly but Spock's hearing is too acute not to make out their words.

Joyful reunion, certainly, and excitement, but Spock also overhears them discussing the ordinary work of parenting their daughter.

"She shouldn't be having nightmares," Sulu says. "Have you let her see the news vids lately—"

"I wouldn't do that," his partner interrupts, a note of annoyance in his voice. "But she knows the ship was destroyed. She saw the swarm attack. Of course she's upset."

An argument brewing? To his surprise, the idea causes Spock some alarm. He likes and respects Sulu and does not wish him to have an unhappy homecoming. He steps a fraction closer.

"If she keeps waking up—" Sulu begins.

"She went through this when you first deployed. She'll settle down. She's more resilient than you know. You have to trust me on this."

Spock looks over in time to see Sulu lean in and give his husband a quick kiss. "I know. I do. I'm sorry I questioned you."

And just like that, the obvious tension and disharmony dissipates between them.

 _Fascinating._

Ensign Chekov and an Ednerian civilian walk past, Chekov keeping up a patter in the woman's ear. To a casual observer, Chekov sounds animated, upbeat, but Spock hears a note of loneliness in his voice, a longing to be with someone right now.

 _You have to learn to see the world from other people's point of view_ , his mother told him frequently when he was growing up. At times she bemoaned his lack of empathy, his distance from the feelings of others—and himself.

 _If she could see him now_.

That thought brings an unexpected lump to his throat. As if sensing his sorrow, Nyota is suddenly beside him, taking his hand. The comforting electric snap of connection—and he exhales a calming breath.

"Have you spoken to the captain?" she asks. He feels her eyes searching his face and he shakes his head. "He'll be glad to know you aren't leaving Starfleet."

"I am uncertain that he is planning to stay," Spock says.

Nyota's fingers tighten on his palm. "What do you mean?"

"The captain applied for a promotion some time ago."

"How do you know that?"

"Commodore Paris contacted me for my evaluation as his first officer. Today he was called to a conference with the Commodore. I presume the promotion has been approved."

"But that doesn't mean—"

"Vice-admirals do not fly," Spock says. "He would be assigned to headquarters, or to a starbase."

She grips his hand more tightly. "And what about you? What are your plans now? Accept an assignment on another ship?"

"That depends on you."

He feels her surprise—and her pleasure—through her touch.

"Well," she says slowly, "the scuttlebutt says the new ship under construction is going to be christened _Enterprise_. If that's the case, I might ask for a post teaching at the Academy until it's ready to sail. Or maybe here on _Yorktown_ , working on the communications protocols."

Spock has heard nothing about plans to rebuild the _Enterprise_ , but he doesn't doubt Nyota. She has an uncanny ability to hear news first—what she calls _scuttlebutt_ which is, almost always, factual. An indication of her communication skills, no doubt, and her willingness to spend copious amounts of time talking to others.

Which leads him to consider what he will do if Jim Kirk _does_ step away from a captain's position.

Spock has little desire to captain a ship himself. He doesn't doubt his technical skill or his strategic and tactical abilities.

But commanding a starship requires something else that he can't quite articulate—a vision of himself as a leader, a willingness to see people as both individuals and integral members of a crew, an almost reckless disregard for rules when caution is illogical. Those are attributes that describe Jim Kirk, not Spock, and he has no qualms about admitting it.

"We have much to consider," he says. A simple statement of fact, but he senses another rush of Nyota's happiness.

"We," she says, smiling. "You said _we_."

Now it is his turn to tease. "Perhaps I used the wrong word? I was attempting to describe two people who plan a future with each other in mind."

The warmth and pressure of her hand is like a promise—and he starts to ask her if she is ready to leave the party when another crewman ambles up and begins talking. Reluctantly, Spock drops her hand and steps back a fraction. Nyota flashes him a glance and he hastily hides his disappointment.

They'll leave the party soon enough. For now, he reins in his impatience, content to let the sound of her voice wash over him like a caress.

* * *

Leonard McCoy has the worst poker face of anyone Jim knows, so the birthday party isn't much of a surprise. The surprise is _where_ it is—in the observation lounge closest to Starfleet's _Yorktown_ shipyards. A transparent wall affords a view of the skeleton of a ship under construction, an unnamed Constitution class starship with technology upgrades so classified that Kirk hasn't seen the specs. It pulls his gaze like a magnet—a small balm, of sorts, for the heartache of losing the _Enterprise_.

He's not the only one. As he drifts around the room talking to well-wishers, he notices that they, too, seem drawn to the busy hub outside—or inside, depending on how you think of the enclosed world of the _Yorktown._

"You're missing your party," Bones says at his side, and Jim makes an effort to look away.

"Thanks for this." Jim waves his glass to include the room and the party guests.

"Wasn't me," Bones says, pointing across the room where Uhura is chatting with Chekov, Spock standing at parade rest behind her. "You know, if you ever get another command, you ought to create a Chief Party Officer. We could have used more parties these past three years."

"Done. Have someone in mind?"

"If you didn't need Uhura on the bridge, I'd put her in charge. Don't know how Spock would feel about that, though."

"He looks pretty mellow to me." Jim takes another sip of his bourbon.

McCoy guffaws loudly. "Don't be fooled by appearances. Scratch the surface and your mellow Vulcan is anything but."

That's true, of course. Jim can still conjure up the feeling of Spock's fingers around his neck after the destruction of Vulcan. Can recall the crucifixion in Spock's expression—and his weeping—as Jim's life flickered out in the warp containment room.

He starts to say something about this but McCoy says, "I guess by now you've heard about Ambassador Spock. If you haven't said anything to Spock yet, don't. Or don't say much. He's shattered about it, as you can imagine."

"I can't ignore it, Bones. That would be worse."

"Jim, he knows how you feel. If you have to say something, be brief. Wait until he's ready."

That doesn't sit well. Jim's never been one for diplomacy or holding back when charging forward is an option.

"Mr. Sensitive," he says at last, an acquiescence of sorts.

Scotty wanders up, drink in hand. "Did you think about what I said, sir?"

Before Jim can answer, Bones butts in. "What are you two up to?"

"Jaylah," Scotty says. "She's got no family left, and no real place to go. She's a keen engineer already. And she's got this uncanny knack for electronics. Did you know, she can actually _see_ harmonic dissonance before the scanner picks it up? Something to do with growing up on a dark planet. With some more training, she could find a home in Starfleet."

Jim takes the PADD Scotty is holding and taps until he has Jaylah's acceptance letter to Starfleet Academy on the screen.

"Spoke to Admiral Paris about it already," he says. "Why don't you let her know."

Scotty's face is almost luminous. "Aye, captain," he says. But he stands in place without moving. For a moment Jim waits for him to leave, and when he doesn't, he says, "Was there something else, Mr. Scott?"

"It's about Kevin, sir."

"Kevin?"

"That's the name he chose. Seems no one but Uhura can pronounce his Teenaxion one."

"Our stowaway," Jim says. Scotty nods.

"He wants to learn about the Federation," Scotty says. "He's taken with the idea of Starfleet. Apparently his people have nothing quite like it. He's offered to be a sort of liaison, captain, if we'll let him live among the crew for awhile. Keenser's offered to let him bunk with him."

"I seem to recall you needed a little help the last time you addressed the Teenaxion delegation," McCoy says with a wry grin. "Might be a good idea to let him stay."

After saving _Yorktown_ , Jim's pretty sure he has enough leverage to ask for a few more favors from Commodore Paris. "Sure," he tells Scotty, who flashes a grin before heading across the room to where Jaylah is ensconced on a sofa. He watches as Scotty crosses over to her—sees her reaction—and then joins them to congratulate her.

When he heads back toward the bar, he notices Spock quietly watching the construction outside the observation window. Bones' admonition not to say much about Ambassador Spock ties Jim's tongue and he stutters an awkward condolence.

"Is that what you wanted to mention to me that time in the turbolift?" Someone else might have forgotten such an ordinary moment, but Spock forgets nothing.

To Jim's astonishment, Spock gives an answer so imprecise, so unlike him, that it has to be a lie. "More or less," he says, his gaze shifting with unmistakable unease.

Then Spock's voice stiffens and he says, "I trust your meeting with Commodore Paris went well." Jim isn't fooled. Spock must know about the promotion—and is asking if he's accepted it.

"More or less."

 _So much said in those three words._ Assurance that he that he's not bailing on his crew—that when they get a ship again, they'll be together. Family, that's what they are. No use calling it anything less.

The party ends in a few hours and finally, finally Jim is alone in temporary quarters in a residential area near the Starfleet outpost headquarters. He shouldn't have drunk as much as he did. His mouth is like cotton and he has the false clarity he gets after a night of bourbon.

Glancing at his watch, he calculates the time on Earth. Still his actual birthday there—and with it, an obligation. He sits uneasily on a straight-back chair and uses the subspace transmitter to call his mother.

She's at the family farmhouse in Iowa, a place Jim visits rarely, though he can picture it clearly—his mother perched on a wicker sofa on the front porch, the prairie spread out in all directions. She answers at once.

"Bet you thought I'd forgotten," Jim says as a greeting. It's an old joke between them, an acknowledgement of the dual nature of the day, unforgettable as both celebration and memorial.

"What did you do to celebrate?" His mother's voice is smoke and honey over the distance. He tabs up the volume and hears the ambient noise in the background—birds and wind and a faint flitter dopplering by.

"Oh, not much. Some friends got together for drinks."

"No dancing? No bar fights? You've gotten boring."

In spite of his somber mood, Jim laughs.

They talk for a few minutes about inconsequential things—a garden his mother is tending while she's in between off-world assignments, his brother's plan to look for a larger house on Deneva. They do not talk about the _Enterprise_ , or his lost crew, or the near-destruction of _Yorktown_. Jim offers no words about Altamid and what he saw there, or Krall and the mystery of the _Franklin's_ disappearance solved at last.

When they've talked around the subject long enough, Jim finally says, "I know you miss him."

His mother is silent for a beat and Jim wonders if he's lost the subspace connection. "Always," she says. Then her voice turns falsely chipper and she says, "So. When are you coming home? You've been away from your family way too long."

He says all the usual stuff—that he'll try to get there soon, that it would be nice if Sam and Aurelan could bring the boys for the winter holidays.

And he ends their conversation as he always does, assuring her that he does have family near—with his friends and crew. He knows she understands as only another Starfleet crew member would understand—how closely knit shipmates are, how essential to each other's well-being.

All true words, but when he hangs up, he has an overwhelming sense of being alone—not in the way that he is alone when he's on the ship, but really and truly alone, in an unfamiliar place, his future uncertain.

Maybe another drink wouldn't be such a bad idea.

When the door chime sounds, he has a moment of hope that Bones has read his mind and is waiting to take him out for another round.

The door slides open and Carol Marcus stands there, duffel in one hand.

"What are you doing here!"

"That's what I like. A nice warm hello."

"Uh, I mean, I thought you were in San Francisco. How did you get here?"

"You won't believe it, but there are actually transports between Earth and _Yorktown._ Spaceships. Marvels of the modern world. Do I have to keep standing here, or are you going to invite me in?"

With a start, Jim comes to, taking her duffel and ushering her to the sitting area. Before she takes a chair, she brushes his cheek with a kiss.

"How long are you—I mean, why did you—" He knows he sounds like an idiot, muttering and incomprehensible. The last time they'd spoken, she'd made her wishes to settle in one place clear, taking a temporary posting on Earth with the hope of a future posting on _Yorktown_. When he hadn't jumped at the chance to join her, the relationship faltered.

He takes a chair facing her and grins his delight that she's here.

"Did you really think I wouldn't come check on the crew?" she says. "They are my friends, too."

His grin disappears at once. Carol had been a member of the _Enterprise_ almost three years—until she transferred two months ago. Many of her friends died in the attack. Many of her friends are now on _Yorktown_ , waiting to be debriefed before getting new assignments. Part of her might feel guilty about not being there when they needed her.

"Yes, of course," he says, chastened. _Whatever he had hoped for—_

"But mostly," she continues, "I wanted to see you. Maybe get a bed for the night?"

He looks up and gives her a sly grin. She's beaming—the way she used to when they were still happy with each other.

"Just the night?"

"Well," she says, echoing the smirk on his face, "a night or two. Until someone figures out I'm missing at work."

"You didn't get permission to leave?"

"Took a page from your book, captain. Break the rules. Isn't that your motto?" She laughs at that, and before he knows what she's doing, she's out of her chair and settling sideways in his lap, her kiss heating him up and short-circuiting his ability to think clearly.

But even as he feels himself giving into the moment, something nags in the corner of his brain, like a growing shadow.

"Carol," he says, pulling back slightly so he can look her in the eye. "We need to talk."

At once she's wary, her body going rigid. "I'm listening."

"I think you ought to know," Jim says, "that I applied for a promotion and a posting on _Yorktown_."

Carol's eyes widen. "And?"

"And I got it."

He hears her intake of breath and he hurries on. "And I turned it down."

Immediately her expression darkens. He half expects her to rise and leave.

"I know this sounds crazy, but I feel like I know where my place is. Where I'm meant to be. And that place isn't behind a desk on a starbase. It's in the captain's chair on a starship."

Carol looks at him with an intensity that makes him squirm. "I thought you didn't believe in destiny."

"I'm not explaining myself very well," Jim says. "I mean, there's nowhere else I feel so connected as I do on my ship. Where I know what to do and how to best serve. My crew…"

He pauses, weighing his words. "My crew needs me. And I need to be there for them." He pauses again, gauging her response. Disappointment? Anger? He can't read her at all right now. "I'm sorry, Carol. I wanted to make this work, but—"

To his surprise, he feels her finger touch his lips.

"Don't say anything else."

"But—"

"You aren't very good at obeying orders, are you? I said, don't say anything else. Don't apologize for being who you are."

She kisses him briefly, and he thinks _now she's going to leave me_ when she stands up. He braces himself for the parting—the aftermath and loneliness—but she reaches for his hand and tugs him to his feet.

"You didn't answer my question."

"Question?"

"Can I get a bed for the night?"

Relief, and gratitude, and love—he feels all three in an instance.

Temporary, perhaps, but right now, in this moment, just what he needs.

 **Author's Note: And so we come to the end of this "missing scenes" story! I had fun writing it, and I hope you enjoyed reading it. Thanks so much to everyone who took the time and trouble to leave reviews. I appreciate you more than you can know.**

 **My Muse is whispering an idea about a story that follows the crew during their forced hiatus while the new** _ **Enterprise**_ **is being built. It might be fun to see what they all get up to. Keep an eye out in case my Muse gets insistent and I write something new.**


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